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Seasonal forecasts in the Sahel region: the use of rainfall-based predictive variables

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Abstract

In the Sahel region, seasonal predictions are crucial to alleviate the impacts of climate variability on populations' livelihoods. Agricultural planning (e.g., decisions about sowing date, fertilizer application date, and choice of crop or cultivar) is based on empirical predictive indices whose accuracy to date has not been scientifically proven. This paper attempts to statistically test whether the pattern of rainfall distribution over the May–July period contributes to predicting the real onset date and the nature (wet or dry) of the rainy season, as farmers believe. To that end, we considered historical records of daily rainfall from 51 stations spanning the period 1920–2008 and the different agro-climatic zones in Burkina Faso. We performed (1) principal component analysis to identify climatic zones, based on the patterns of intra-seasonal rainfall, (2) and linear discriminant analysis to find the best rainfall-based variables to distinguish between real and false onset dates of the rainy season, and between wet and dry seasons in each climatic zone. A total of nine climatic zones were identified in each of which, based on rainfall records from May to July, we derived linear discriminant functions to correctly predict the nature of a potential onset date of the rainy season (real or false) and that of the rainy season (dry or wet) in at least three cases out of five. These functions should contribute to alleviating the negative impacts of climate variability in the different climatic zones of Burkina Faso.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by: (1) African Climate Change Fellowship Program (ACCFP) managed by the global change System for Analysis, Research and Training (START) and (2) the “Community management of crop diversity to enhance resilience, yield stability and income generation in changing West Africa climates” (CODEWA) project managed by the International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) under GTZ project number 07.7860.5-001.00. We are also thankful to the national meteorological service of Burkina Faso for the datasets.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de l’Environnement et de Recherches Agricoles (INERA), P.O. Box 476, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

    Tiganadaba Lodoun, Moussa Sanon & Léopold Somé

  2. IRI for Climate and Society, The Earth Institute at Columbia University, P.O. Box 1000, Palisades, NY, 10964-8000, USA

    Alessandra Giannini

  3. International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), P.O. Box 320, Bamako, Mali

    Pierre Sibiry Traoré

  4. Université de Ouagadougou, P.O. Box 7021, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

    Jeanne Millogo Rasolodimby

Authors
  1. Tiganadaba Lodoun
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  2. Moussa Sanon
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  3. Alessandra Giannini
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  4. Pierre Sibiry Traoré
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  5. Léopold Somé
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  6. Jeanne Millogo Rasolodimby
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Correspondence to Tiganadaba Lodoun.

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Lodoun, T., Sanon, M., Giannini, A. et al. Seasonal forecasts in the Sahel region: the use of rainfall-based predictive variables. Theor Appl Climatol 117, 485–494 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-013-1002-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-013-1002-1

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