**Meet the editor**

Aondover Tarhule is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma. After receiving his Ph.D. in Geography at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, he taught briefly at the University of Jos, Nigeria as well as at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada as holder of the

Canadian Science Advisory Council post-doctoral research fellowship. He has wide ranging research interests, including hydroclimatic variability, hydrologic response to climate change, extreme events in hydrology, climate information dissemination and use, and environmental change. Since 2009, Dr. Tarhule has served as Chair in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability at the University of Oklahoma. He is member of several editorial boards, including the Scientific World Journal. He has served as technical program reviewer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), numerous National Science Foundation (NSF) panel reviews, and consultant on a World Bank climate risk assessment project.

Contents

**Preface VII**

**Climate Models 3**

**Projections 37**

**Analysis 57**

**Scenarios 75**

**Section 2 Section II 73**

**Section 3 Section III 105**

M. B. Sylla, I. Diallo and J. S. Pal

Coulibaly and N. Harshadeep

Coulibaly and N. Harshadeep

**Climatic Variability 107**

Chapter 1 **West African Monsoon in State-of-the-Science Regional**

Chapter 2 **Climate Risk Assessment for Water Resources Development in the Niger River Basin Part I: Context and Climate**

Chapter 3 **Climate Risk Assessment for Water Resources Development in**

Chapter 4 **Global Warming — Scientific Facts, Problems and Possible**

Chapter 5 **A Review of Climate Signals as Predictors of Long-Term Hydro-**

M.G. Ogurtsov, M. Lindholm and R. Jalkanen

Shahab Araghinejad and Ehsan Meidani

J. G. Grijsen, C. Brown, A. Tarhule, Y. B. Ghile, Ü. Taner, A. Talbi-Jordan, H. N. Doffou, A. Guero, R. Y. Dessouassi, S. Kone, B.

**the Niger River Basin Part II: Runoff Elasticity and Probabilistic**

J.G. Grijsen, A. Tarhule, C. Brown, Y.B. Ghile, Ü. Taner, A. Talbi-Jordan, H. N. Doffou, A. Guero, R. Y. Dessouassi, S. Kone, B.

**Section 1 Section I 1**

## Contents

#### **Preface XI**

#### **Section 1 Section I 1**


J. G. Grijsen, C. Brown, A. Tarhule, Y. B. Ghile, Ü. Taner, A. Talbi-Jordan, H. N. Doffou, A. Guero, R. Y. Dessouassi, S. Kone, B. Coulibaly and N. Harshadeep

Chapter 3 **Climate Risk Assessment for Water Resources Development in the Niger River Basin Part II: Runoff Elasticity and Probabilistic Analysis 57**

J.G. Grijsen, A. Tarhule, C. Brown, Y.B. Ghile, Ü. Taner, A. Talbi-Jordan, H. N. Doffou, A. Guero, R. Y. Dessouassi, S. Kone, B. Coulibaly and N. Harshadeep

#### **Section 2 Section II 73**

Chapter 4 **Global Warming — Scientific Facts, Problems and Possible Scenarios 75** M.G. Ogurtsov, M. Lindholm and R. Jalkanen

#### **Section 3 Section III 105**

Chapter 5 **A Review of Climate Signals as Predictors of Long-Term Hydro-Climatic Variability 107** Shahab Araghinejad and Ehsan Meidani

Chapter 6 **Some Indicators of Interannual Rainfall Variability in Patagonia (Argentina) 133** Marcela Hebe González

Preface

hydroclimatic investigations.

divided the book into four sections.

specific location?

It is now clear that climate change and climate variability will affect nearly all aspects of human existence on earth, as well as exert significant impacts on agro-ecological systems. Perhaps because of the complexity of the climate system, and therefore the level at which we have confidence in our ability to model it, much discussion of climate change and its im‐ pacts tends to focus, in terms of statistical parameters, on the average, and, in terms of spa‐ tial resolution, at fairly generalized spatial scale. At one level, this approach is very helpful and has facilitated a degree of scientific clarity that has driven much of the scientific prog‐ ress of the last two to three decades related to climate change. At another level however, there is recognition that people do not live in an average world. Everyone lives in a very specific location with specific climatic context and dynamics and engages in specific activi‐ ties whose response to climate change may not reflect even the average conditions for the region. We recognize also that for some parts of the world, it is the variability around the average that exerts the most significant impacts. Indeed, the claim has been made that for regions such as semi-arid West Africa (i.e. the Sahel), the average has no meaning. Thus, as climate change proceeds, we are much more likely to notice and be impacted by changes in the patterns of variability related to where we live and the specific activities that we engage in. For this reason, understanding climate variability in specific locations and themes (read, sectors or areas of human endeavor) is a crucial and logical next level in climate change and

Related to this are two other issues. First, how do we document and analyze ongoing cli‐ mate change and climate variability and its impacts? Second, how do we respond to climate change and climate variability especially given inherent uncertainty in the climate models themselves, as well as limitations in our understanding of what specific impacts will be in a

This book attempts to explore these questions. Obviously, any one of the above topics can be the subject of an entire book all by itself. Therefore, we are neither presumptuous enough nor naïve enough to believe that we can address all of the relevant issues. Rather, our goal is to contribute, hopefully new and meaningful information to the ongoing discourse; to pro‐ vide another piece of the puzzle that fills in a small gap, yet helps to bring out the evolving picture on climate change and climate variability. Consistent with the goals of this book, the contributing authors and the works selected represent various regions of the world from the Great Prairies of the Central United States to Argentina and from West Africa to the Middle East and Russia. Similarly the topics addressed run the spectrum from fundamental ques‐ tions related to climate change to adaptation approaches. To facilitate readership, we have

#### **Section 4 Section IV 163**


## Preface

Chapter 6 **Some Indicators of Interannual Rainfall Variability in Patagonia**

Chapter 8 **The Effect of Agricultural Growing Season Change on Market**

Chapter 7 **High-Resolution Surface Observations for Climate**

**(Argentina) 133** Marcela Hebe González

**Monitoring 165** Renee A. McPherson

**Prices in Africa 189**

K. M. de Beurs and M. E. Brown

**Section 4 Section IV 163**

**VI** Contents

It is now clear that climate change and climate variability will affect nearly all aspects of human existence on earth, as well as exert significant impacts on agro-ecological systems. Perhaps because of the complexity of the climate system, and therefore the level at which we have confidence in our ability to model it, much discussion of climate change and its im‐ pacts tends to focus, in terms of statistical parameters, on the average, and, in terms of spa‐ tial resolution, at fairly generalized spatial scale. At one level, this approach is very helpful and has facilitated a degree of scientific clarity that has driven much of the scientific prog‐ ress of the last two to three decades related to climate change. At another level however, there is recognition that people do not live in an average world. Everyone lives in a very specific location with specific climatic context and dynamics and engages in specific activi‐ ties whose response to climate change may not reflect even the average conditions for the region. We recognize also that for some parts of the world, it is the variability around the average that exerts the most significant impacts. Indeed, the claim has been made that for regions such as semi-arid West Africa (i.e. the Sahel), the average has no meaning. Thus, as climate change proceeds, we are much more likely to notice and be impacted by changes in the patterns of variability related to where we live and the specific activities that we engage in. For this reason, understanding climate variability in specific locations and themes (read, sectors or areas of human endeavor) is a crucial and logical next level in climate change and hydroclimatic investigations.

Related to this are two other issues. First, how do we document and analyze ongoing cli‐ mate change and climate variability and its impacts? Second, how do we respond to climate change and climate variability especially given inherent uncertainty in the climate models themselves, as well as limitations in our understanding of what specific impacts will be in a specific location?

This book attempts to explore these questions. Obviously, any one of the above topics can be the subject of an entire book all by itself. Therefore, we are neither presumptuous enough nor naïve enough to believe that we can address all of the relevant issues. Rather, our goal is to contribute, hopefully new and meaningful information to the ongoing discourse; to pro‐ vide another piece of the puzzle that fills in a small gap, yet helps to bring out the evolving picture on climate change and climate variability. Consistent with the goals of this book, the contributing authors and the works selected represent various regions of the world from the Great Prairies of the Central United States to Argentina and from West Africa to the Middle East and Russia. Similarly the topics addressed run the spectrum from fundamental ques‐ tions related to climate change to adaptation approaches. To facilitate readership, we have divided the book into four sections.

**Section one** contains three chapters and is focused regionally on West Africa. In a sense this is appropriate because West Africa is (in)famous as the region that has experienced the most dramatic impacts of climatic variability of any place on earth since instrumental records have been kept. Chapter 1, by Sylla, Diallo, and Pal describes the representation of the West African Monsoon (WAM) in State-of-the-Art-Regional Climate Models. As the authors note, although the WAM occurs during only a part of the year, it is responsible for bringing rain‐ fall to West Africa, on which the livelihoods of a majority the population of the region de‐ pends. Because of this dependence, drought impacts, for example, tend to have immediate and direct consequences on the economy and human wellbeing hence there is strong inter‐ est in improving rainfall forecasts for the region. Drawing upon their research and insights, the authors provide an excellent discussion of the relevant processes and dynamics that im‐ pact West Africa's rainfall as well as the challenges and progress in modeling these dynam‐ ics. In the last decade or so, these efforts coalesced in the African Multidisciplinary Monsoon Analysis (AMMA) which provided a variety of datasets and different scales. Building on the success of AMMA, the Coordinated Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) has since being launched with the goal of fostering international coordinated effort to improve representa‐ tion of the WAM in regional climate models.

festing or might manifest in different regions. That is, knowing the sources of climate tele‐ connections and their impacts around the world, climate scientists will be in a strong position to recognize departures from those established patterns either in terms of the proc‐

Chapter 6 continues this theme with a more specific regional emphasis. Focusing on the Pa‐ tagonia region of South America, González examines interannual rainfall variability and its links to various teleconnections. The author identified the specific climatic seasons that in‐ fluence rainfall over various parts of the study region. Such information is the basis for de‐ veloping predictive algorithms that facilitate early warning and long-range adaptive

Finally, **section four** focuses on the role of monitoring in climate change and climate varia‐ bility applications. In Chapter 7, McPherson provides a succinct review of the evolution of ground based climate observation and monitoring. Her defense of surface observations sys‐ tems is admirable and timely given the tendency towards the remote sensing technologies. Clearly, we are not yet at a point, and perhaps may never be, where we can completely abandon surface observation systems. The emergence of citizen science networks is a wel‐ come development and may help improve public awareness about climate patterns and var‐

Rounding up the section and the book, de Beurs and Brown show how remote sensing of phonological phases can be used to predict market prices based on the performance of field crops. Their premise is that crops in the field provide early indications of the season's har‐ vests which have a direct bearing on food prices. Although preliminary, the results show promise and can potentially be used in combination with climate forecasts to provide deci‐

We hope that you find something useful and illuminating from this variety of perspectives.

Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability,

**Dr. Aondover Tarhule**

University of Oklahoma,

USA

Preface IX

esses themselves or the impacts that they cause.

iability while lowering monitoring costs.

sion makers yet another early warning tool.

decision-making.

Chapters 2 and 3 by Grijsen and co-workers describe an innovative and comprehensive cli‐ mate risk assessment for the Niger Basin in West Africa. Much of what passes for adaptation to climate change in the literature is little more than arm-waving at some vaguely defined or perceived impact. The authors adopt an entirely novel approach. Taking advantage of a new investment initiative by the member states of the Niger Basin Authority in collaboration with donor partners, the authors use a bottom up approach in which climate risk is defined with respect to the degree of departure from baseline conditions to specific sectors and oper‐ ations that stakeholders would consider unacceptable. From that starting point, they esti‐ mated the magnitude of expected climate change, principally precipitation and temperature for various time periods in to the future (near, mid- and long term) and then translated those climate changes to impacts on the study sectors to assess the probability that the risk thresholds is exceeded. The results are refreshing and interesting from multiple perspec‐ tives. They are quantitative, targeted at specific sectors and in many cases are localized in terms of time. Such information provides decision markers a real starting point for which to prioritize mitigating actions given limited resources.

**Section two** contains one chapter. Written by Ogurtsov, Lindholm and Jalkanen, the chapter is an accessible review of the status of knowledge related to global warming. It presents not only the presently widely accepted facts and evidence but examines the nuances of that evi‐ dence, frequently interrogating the evidence in the manner used by some climate change skeptics. An excellent synthesis, the authors show that despite a lack of perfect knowledge, the evidence from a variety of sources simply is overwhelming that the average temperature of the Earth through AD 1900–2000 was undoubtedly higher than the average temperature through AD 1000–2000. They attribute the forcing factors to both natural climatic variability but also anthropogenic factors. This chapter is a useful reference source on the fundamentals of climate change and climate variability that attempts to consider both sides of the evidence.

**Section three** contains two chapters. In Chapter 5 Araghinejad and Meidani provide a re‐ view of different climate signals around the world and their potential as predictors of longterm hydro-climatic variability. While the authors do not belabor the point, this kind of analysis is essential as background information for assessing how climate change is mani‐ festing or might manifest in different regions. That is, knowing the sources of climate tele‐ connections and their impacts around the world, climate scientists will be in a strong position to recognize departures from those established patterns either in terms of the proc‐ esses themselves or the impacts that they cause.

**Section one** contains three chapters and is focused regionally on West Africa. In a sense this is appropriate because West Africa is (in)famous as the region that has experienced the most dramatic impacts of climatic variability of any place on earth since instrumental records have been kept. Chapter 1, by Sylla, Diallo, and Pal describes the representation of the West African Monsoon (WAM) in State-of-the-Art-Regional Climate Models. As the authors note, although the WAM occurs during only a part of the year, it is responsible for bringing rain‐ fall to West Africa, on which the livelihoods of a majority the population of the region de‐ pends. Because of this dependence, drought impacts, for example, tend to have immediate and direct consequences on the economy and human wellbeing hence there is strong inter‐ est in improving rainfall forecasts for the region. Drawing upon their research and insights, the authors provide an excellent discussion of the relevant processes and dynamics that im‐ pact West Africa's rainfall as well as the challenges and progress in modeling these dynam‐ ics. In the last decade or so, these efforts coalesced in the African Multidisciplinary Monsoon Analysis (AMMA) which provided a variety of datasets and different scales. Building on the success of AMMA, the Coordinated Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) has since being launched with the goal of fostering international coordinated effort to improve representa‐

Chapters 2 and 3 by Grijsen and co-workers describe an innovative and comprehensive cli‐ mate risk assessment for the Niger Basin in West Africa. Much of what passes for adaptation to climate change in the literature is little more than arm-waving at some vaguely defined or perceived impact. The authors adopt an entirely novel approach. Taking advantage of a new investment initiative by the member states of the Niger Basin Authority in collaboration with donor partners, the authors use a bottom up approach in which climate risk is defined with respect to the degree of departure from baseline conditions to specific sectors and oper‐ ations that stakeholders would consider unacceptable. From that starting point, they esti‐ mated the magnitude of expected climate change, principally precipitation and temperature for various time periods in to the future (near, mid- and long term) and then translated those climate changes to impacts on the study sectors to assess the probability that the risk thresholds is exceeded. The results are refreshing and interesting from multiple perspec‐ tives. They are quantitative, targeted at specific sectors and in many cases are localized in terms of time. Such information provides decision markers a real starting point for which to

**Section two** contains one chapter. Written by Ogurtsov, Lindholm and Jalkanen, the chapter is an accessible review of the status of knowledge related to global warming. It presents not only the presently widely accepted facts and evidence but examines the nuances of that evi‐ dence, frequently interrogating the evidence in the manner used by some climate change skeptics. An excellent synthesis, the authors show that despite a lack of perfect knowledge, the evidence from a variety of sources simply is overwhelming that the average temperature of the Earth through AD 1900–2000 was undoubtedly higher than the average temperature through AD 1000–2000. They attribute the forcing factors to both natural climatic variability but also anthropogenic factors. This chapter is a useful reference source on the fundamentals of climate change and climate variability that attempts to consider both sides of the evidence. **Section three** contains two chapters. In Chapter 5 Araghinejad and Meidani provide a re‐ view of different climate signals around the world and their potential as predictors of longterm hydro-climatic variability. While the authors do not belabor the point, this kind of analysis is essential as background information for assessing how climate change is mani‐

tion of the WAM in regional climate models.

VIII Preface

prioritize mitigating actions given limited resources.

Chapter 6 continues this theme with a more specific regional emphasis. Focusing on the Pa‐ tagonia region of South America, González examines interannual rainfall variability and its links to various teleconnections. The author identified the specific climatic seasons that in‐ fluence rainfall over various parts of the study region. Such information is the basis for de‐ veloping predictive algorithms that facilitate early warning and long-range adaptive decision-making.

Finally, **section four** focuses on the role of monitoring in climate change and climate varia‐ bility applications. In Chapter 7, McPherson provides a succinct review of the evolution of ground based climate observation and monitoring. Her defense of surface observations sys‐ tems is admirable and timely given the tendency towards the remote sensing technologies. Clearly, we are not yet at a point, and perhaps may never be, where we can completely abandon surface observation systems. The emergence of citizen science networks is a wel‐ come development and may help improve public awareness about climate patterns and var‐ iability while lowering monitoring costs.

Rounding up the section and the book, de Beurs and Brown show how remote sensing of phonological phases can be used to predict market prices based on the performance of field crops. Their premise is that crops in the field provide early indications of the season's har‐ vests which have a direct bearing on food prices. Although preliminary, the results show promise and can potentially be used in combination with climate forecasts to provide deci‐ sion makers yet another early warning tool.

We hope that you find something useful and illuminating from this variety of perspectives.

**Dr. Aondover Tarhule** Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability, University of Oklahoma, USA

**Section 1**

**Section I**

**Section 1**

**Section I**

**Chapter 1**

**West African Monsoon in State-of-the-Science Regional**

The western Sahel (e.g. rectangle in Figure 1) climate is dominated by the West African Monsoon (WAM), a large-scale circulation characterized by reversal in direction of winds in the lower levels of the atmosphere from the Atlantic Ocean transporting moisture into land. Although it occurs only during a small portion of the annual cycle between May and Sep‐ tember, the WAM is a climatological feature of major social importance to local populations over West Africa whose economy relies primarily on agriculture. In response to several dec‐ ades of below normal rainfall experienced since the late 1960s, numerous studies have iden‐ tified various factors that control the monsoon variability. Among them are the variability of ocean Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) (e.g. Fontaine et al. 1998), continental land surface conditions (e.g. Wang and Eltahir 2000) and atmospheric circulation (e.g. Nicholson and

Within the atmospheric circulation pattern, are embedded a number of rainfall producing systems (e.g. Figure 2). One of the most prominent features is the African Easterly Jet (AEJ), a mid-tropospheric (600–700 mb) core of strong zonal winds (up to ∼10 m s-1) that travels from East to West Africa. The disturbances around this zonal circulation, the African Easter‐ ly Waves (AEWs), have been identified as key driver of convection and rainfall patterns (Diedhiou et al. 1998). Most of the convective rainfall follows the south-north-south dis‐ placement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) with a mean upward motion that reaches 200 mb. At this level, the Tropical Easterly Jet (TEJ), associated with the Asian mon‐ soon outflow, circulates across West Africa during the boreal summer season. These features form the well-defined meridional structure of WAM circulation related to the mean summer

> © 2013 Sylla et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

© 2013 Sylla et al.; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Climate Models**

M. B. Sylla, I. Diallo and J. S. Pal

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/55140

Grist 2001; Jenkins et al. 2005).

monsoon rainfall (e.g. Figure 3).

**1. Introduction**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter
