Wavelet Analysis of Seasonal Rainfall Variability of the Upper Blue Nile Basin, Its Teleconnection to Global Sea Surface Temperature, and Its Forecasting by an Artificial Neural Network

Abstract

Abstract Rainfall is the primary driver of basin hydrologic processes. This article examines a recently developed rainfall predictive tool that combines wavelet principal component analysis (WPCA), an artificial neural networks-genetic algorithm (ANN-GA), and statistical disaggregation into an integrated framework useful for the management of water resources around the upper Blue Nile River basin (UBNB) in Ethiopia. From the correlation field between scale-average wavelet powers (SAWPs) of the February–May (FMAM) global sea surface temperature (SST) and the first wavelet principal component (WPC1) of June–September (JJAS) seasonal rainfall over the UBNB, sectors of the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans where SSTs show a strong teleconnection with JJAS rainfall in the UBNB (r ≥ 0.4) were identified. An ANN-GA model was developed to forecast the UBNB seasonal rainfall using the selected SST sectors. Results show that ANN-GA forecasted seasonal rainfall amounts that agree well with the observed data for the UBNB [root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) between 0.72 and 0.82, correlation between 0.68 and 0.77, and Hanssen–Kuipers (HK) scores between 0.5 and 0.77], but the results in the foothills region of the Great Rift Valley (GRV) were poor, which is expected since the variability of WPC1 mainly comes from the highlands of Ethiopia. The Valencia and Schaake model was used to disaggregate the forecasted seasonal rainfall to weekly rainfall, which was found to reasonably capture the characteristics of the observed weekly rainfall over the UBNB. The ability to forecast the UBNB rainfall at a season-long lead time will be useful for an optimal allocation of water usage among various competing users in the river basin.