English
 
Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Time series analysis of floods across the Niger River basin

Authors
/persons/resource/valentin.aich

Aich,  Valentin
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

Koné,  B.
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/Fred.Hattermann

Hattermann,  Fred Fokko
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

Paton,  E. N.
External Organizations;

External Ressource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (public)

7185oa.pdf
(Publisher version), 10MB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Aich, V., Koné, B., Hattermann, F. F., Paton, E. N. (2016): Time series analysis of floods across the Niger River basin. - Water, 8, 4, 165.
https://doi.org/10.3390/w8040165


Cite as: https://publications.pik-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_20898
Abstract
This study analyses the increasing number of catastrophic floods in the Niger River Basin, focusing on the relation between long term hydro-climatic variability and flood risk over the last 40 to 100 years. Time series for three subregions (Guinean, Sahelian, Benue) show a general consistency between the annual maximum discharge (AMAX) and climatic decadal patterns in West Africa regarding both trends and major changepoints. Variance analysis reveals rather stable AMAX distributions except for the Sahelian region, implying that the changes in flood behavior differ within the basin and affect mostly the dry Sahelian region. The timing of the floods within the year has changed only downstream of the Inner Niger Delta due to retention processes. The results of the hydro-climatic analysis generally correspond to the presented damage statistics on people affected by catastrophic floods. The damage statistics shows positive trends for the entire basin since the beginning in the 1980s, with the most extreme increase in the Middle Niger.