Comparing available rainfall gridded datasets for West Africa and the impact on rainfall-runoff modelling results, the case of Burkina-Faso

Abstract

Monthly rainfall data in Burkina-Faso, West Africa, over a period of 77 years are extracted from three different gridded data sets, available either on the web: CRU (Climatic Research Unit, Norwich, UK), SIEREM (HydroSciences Montpellier, France), or from the National Meteorological Center of Burkina-Faso. With a view to modelling the runoff-rainfall relationship at the monthly time step, these data are used at the 0.5 °∗0.5° scale. Despite mean, minimum, standard deviation and inter-annual variability being very similar for the period 1922 to 1998, the three gridded data sets used show an important spatial variability of values with time, and some differences are observed which lead to significantly different runoff-rainfall simulations. Comparison of the rainfall grids has shown that differences between the precipitation grids are more pronounced during years when the rainfall is lower; this also applies to areas where the rainfall is lower. The three different rainfall grids produce differences in mean rainfall of 4 to 11%, depending on the grids that are compared.

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