Determining rainy season onset and retreat over Nigeria from precipitation amount and number of rainy days

Summary This study assesses the relative efficiency of the use of rainfall amount and rainy days in the determination of rainfall onset and retreat dates in Nigeria based on rainfall data for the period 1961 to 2000. Daily rainfall data were sourced from the archives of the Nigerian Meteorological Services, Oshodi Lagos. The specific locations for which data were collected are: Ibadan, Ilorin, Kaduna and Kano. The method of percentage cumulative mean rainfall values was employed in the determination of the rainfall onset and retreat dates. The results obtained show that both rainfall amount and rainy days are equally effective in the determination of the mean rainfall onset and retreat dates in Nigeria. With regards to the rainfall onset and retreat dates of the individual years however, the method based on the rainy days is more effective than that based on rainfall amount, as the former yielded more realistic dates than the latter. It is thus recommended that studies investigating rainfall onset and retreat dates within a series of individual years in Nigeria, should be based on rainy days rather than rainfall amount.     

Uganda rainfall variability and prediction

This study analyzes large-scale controls on Uganda’s rainfall. Unlike past work, here, a May–October season is used because of the year-round nature of agricultural production, vegetation sensitivity to rainfall, and disease transmission. The Uganda rainfall record exhibits steady oscillations of ～3 and 6 years over 1950–2013. Correlation maps at two-season lead time resolve the subtropical ridge over global oceans as an important feature. Multi-variate environmental predictors include Dec–May south Indian Ocean sea surface temperature, east African upper zonal wind, and South Atlantic wind streamfunction, providing a 33% fit to May–Oct rainfall time series. Composite analysis indicates that cool-phase El Niño Southern Oscillation supports increased May–Oct Uganda rainfall via a zonal overturning lower westerly/upper easterly atmospheric circulation. Sea temperature anomalies are positive in the east Atlantic and negative in the west Indian Ocean in respect of wet seasons. The northern Hadley Cell plays a role in limiting the northward march of the equatorial trough from May to October. An analysis of early season floods found that moist inflow from the west Indian Ocean converges over Uganda, generating diurnal thunderstorm clusters that drift southwestward producing high runoff.     

Regional variations in fluctuations of seasonal rainfall over Nigeria

Summary Previous work on rainfall variations over Nigeria has concentrated on country-wide averages, which approach has tended to mask the regional contrasts in the country's rainfall. In this paper, variations of rainy season rainfall over the Southern, Middle Belt, and Northern regions of Nigeria as well as the country as a whole are examined over a 72-year secular period (1916–1987). The extent and nature of nonrandom changes, such as fluctuations, trend and persistence, are investigated.The trend analysis showed a tendency towards decreasing seasonal rainfall totals in all the regions, though only those for the Northern region and the country as a whole were significant. No significant persistence was however evident in any of the regions.Power spectrum analysis revealed the occurrence of significant oscillations with time periods of 2.53 to 2.67 and 3.69 to 4.36 years only in the Middle Belt, and 8.00 to 9.60 years in all the regions. The climatological identity of the Middle Belt and the implications of its rainfall oscillations for the large scale agricultural projects planned for the region are pointed out.With 3 Figures     

Diagnosing Australia-Asian monsoon onset/retreat using large-scale wind and moisture indices

Using large-scale variables, in this study we have developed a method for defining monsoon onset/retreat in the Australia-Asian region and used this method to study monsoon activities simulated by global climate models. For this purpose, the method needs to capture fundamental characteristics of monsoon rainfall and circulation seasonal variations and at the same time it can be reasonably simulated by current climate models. We develop the method by using both atmospheric precipitable water and wind conditions in our definition and compared our results using 44-year ERA-40 reanalysis data with some published results in the region. Our results offer similar features to several observational studies, including features in Australia-Asian summer monsoon temporal and spatial evolutions and their interannual variations. Results further show that the observed significant increase in summer rainfall in northwest Australia corresponds to earlier onset and much longer duration of its summer monsoon, with its duration significantly increased. Prolonged summer monsoon duration is also seen in central-east China where upward rainfall trend is observed. Furthermore, the Australian summer monsoon appears to be more affected by ENSO than the Asian monsoon, with delayed onsets and shortened durations during El Nino years. Finally, by analyzing results from an IPCC AR4 model, we have shown that using the two large-scale variables simulated by climate models, it is possible to conduct some detailed studies on monsoon activities in current and future climate. Results from this particular model suggest that global warming could potentially modify some of the monsoon characteristics, including earlier onset in most of the region but different features for changes in duration. In the Australian region, it also displays further southward penetration of its summer monsoon.     

An investigation of the characteristics of the onset and cessation of the rains in Nigeria

Summary Rainfall and potential evapotranspiration (PE) data spanning 35 years (1959–1993) were analysed to determine the onset and cessation of the rains for 4 selected stations in each of the 4 major selected zones of Nigeria. The characteristics of onset and cessation of the rains have been categorised as normal, early and late. The pattern of occurrence of each category varies among the ecological zones. For instance, the occurrence of normal onset of the rains is highest at locations in the Forest and Guinea Savanna Zones. In the Sudan Savanna area, however, the occurrence of normal onset of the rains is equal with that of late occurrence. It was, however, found that the occurrence of normal cessation of the rains is higher than early or late cessation at locations in all the zones. Furthermore, the occurrence of each category of the cessation of the rains is more consistent than that of the onset. The influence of the Inter-Tropical Discontinuity (ITD) on the latter observation have been noted. Further analysis of the characteristics of the onset and cessation of the rains showed that occurrence of short-falls in the duration of the rainfalls for normal agricultural activaties is peculiar to all the zones. However, such shortfalls are lower in the Forest Zone than in the Savanna regions, indicating that the reliability of the duration of the rainfalls for normal agricultural activities decreases northwards from the forest to the Sudan Savanna region. The implications of the observations for farm operations have been stressed.With 10 Figures     

Fluctuations in the onset,termination and length of the growing season in northern Nigeria

Summary A simple water balance method is used to compute the dates of the onset and termination and length of the growing season from long-term rainfall series in northern Nigeria. For most of the stations, the time series of onset and termination dates and growing season length are homogeneous and random, and can be taken as normally distributed. There is a progressive decrease in the length of the growing season from a mean of about 200 days in the south to less than 155 days in the extreme northern part. While there is no statistically significant trend in the onset dates, there is some evidence for statistically significant decreasing trend in the termination dates and the length of the growing season over the region. The results indicate that recent trends in the length of the growing season are more sensitive.to large interannual fluctuations in the start of the rains than to variations in the cessation dates.With 7 Figures     

Spatial variation of deterministic chaos in mean daily temperature and rainfall over Nigeria

Daily rainfall and temperature data from 47 locations across Nigeria for the 36-year period 1979–2014 were treated to time series analysis technique to investigate some nonlinear trends in rainfall and temperature data. Some quantifiers such as Lyapunov exponents, correlation dimension, and entropy were obtained for the various locations. Positive Lyapunov exponents were obtained for the time series of mean daily rainfall for all locations in the southern part of Nigeria while negative Lyapunov exponents were obtained for all locations in the Northern part of Nigeria. The mean daily temperature had positive Lyapunov exponent values (0.35–1.6) for all the locations. Attempts were made in reconstructing the phase space of time series of rainfall and temperature.     

High-resolution summer rainfall prediction in the JHWC real-time WRF system

The WRF-based real-time forecast system (http://jhwc.snu.ac.kr/weather) of the Joint Center for High-impact Weather and Climate Research (JHWC) has been in operation since November 2006; this system has three nested model domains using GFS (Global Forecast System) data for its initial and boundary conditions. In this study, we evaluate the improvement in daily and hourly weather prediction, particularly the prediction of summer rainfall over the Korean Peninsula, in the JHWC WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model system by 3DVAR (three-Dimensional Variational) data assimilation using the data obtained from KEOP (Korea Enhanced Observation Program). KEOP was conducted during the period June 15 to July 15, 2007, and the data obtained included GTS (Global Telecommunication System) upper-air sounding, AWS (Automatic Weather System), wind profiler, and radar observation data. Rainfall prediction and its characteristics should be verified by using the precipitation observation and the difference field of each experiment. High-resolution (3 km in domain 3) summer rainfall prediction over the Korean peninsula is substantially influenced by improved synoptic-scale prediction in domains 1 (27 km) and 2 (9 km), in particular by data assimilation using the sounding and wind profiler data. The rainfall prediction in domain 3 was further improved by radar and AWS data assimilation in domain 3. The equitable threat score and bias score of the rainfall predicted in domain 3 indicated improvement for the threshold values of 0.1, 1, and 2.5 mm with data assimilation. For cases of occurrence of heavy rainfall (7 days), the equitable threat score and bias score improved considerably at all threshold values as compared to the entire period of KEOP. Radar and AWS data assimilation improved the temporal and spatial distributions of diurnal rainfall over southern Korea, and AWS data assimilation increased the predicted rainfall amount by approximately 0.3 mm 3hr^?1.     

Evaluation of daily precipitation statistics and monsoon onset/retreat over western Sahel in multiple data sets

Climate Dynamics - The West Africa rainfall regime constitutes a considerable challenge for Regional Climate Models (RCMs) due to the complexity of dynamical and physical processes that...     

Intrinsic problems in the seasonal prediction of the Indian summer monsoon rainfall

Summary The latest non-parametric statistical tool Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) has been shown to extract deterministic oscillations present in a nonlinear dynamical system. It has been hypothesized that the tropical ocean-atmosphere system consists of both deterministic and stochastic parts in the interannual time scales. In the present study SSA has been employed to extract the deterministic and random parts present in the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) and its predictors time series data sets.The dominant eigenmode pair of the ISM does not emerge as a pure and deterministic oscillation. However, about 34% variance is deterministically predictable in the inter-annual range. The second pair is significantly related to the first pair of Darwin pressure tendency and both emerge as deterministic parts. This relationship partially answers the questions raised by Webster and Yang (1992). The low frequency component of ENSO emerges as a deterministic oscillation in all the variables, except in Bombay pressure tendency. The presence of decadal-scale oscillations may possibly be responsible for the instability in the relationship between the ISM and its predictors. Some plausible explanations for the percent variance explained by the predictors in the existing empirical models have also been discussed. It has been proposed that empirical models can be constructed only with the deterministic parts which may help improve the predictive skill of existing models.With 12 Figures     

Teleconnections in recent time and prediction of Indian summer monsoon rainfall

Summary The prediction of Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall (ISMR) is vital for Indian economic policy and a challenge for meteorologists. It needs various predictors among which El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most important. It has been established by various researchers that ENSO and ISMR relationship is weakening in recent years. It has been also argued that changes in ENSO-ISMR relationship may be due to decadal fluctuations, or it may be the indicative of longer-term trends related to anthropogenic-induced climate changes.In the present communication, an attempt is made to discuss the variability and predictability of ISMR in recent years. It is found that three different indices associated with different regions in the tropics and extra-tropics at different levels of the atmosphere-Asian land mass index represented by geopotential height at upper troposphere (A1), Caribbean-North Atlantic index represented by geopotential height at middle troposphere (A2) and tropical Pacific index at surface level (A3) – have different mechanisms to interact mutually and separately with ISMR in different periods. In recent years ISMR shows weak association with A1 and A3 while strong association with A2. Thus, if these three indices could be combined objectively, they can give rise to the predictability of ISMR. This objective combination is achieved here using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and a model is developed to predict ISMR. This model has predicted reasonably well during the whole period of consideration (1958–2000) with a correlation coefficient of 0.92 in last 11 years (1990–2000) whereas most of the models fail to predict the variability in recent time.Current affiliation: Department of Physics, Federal University of Parana, Curitiba, Brazil.Received June 2002; revised October 1, 2002; accepted November 12, 2002 Published online: April 10, 2003     

Determination of the onset dates of the rainy season in central Amazon with equatorially antisymmetric outgoing longwave radiation

The present work provides a new methodology to determine onset dates of the rainy season (ONR) in central Amazon (CAM) using the antisymmetric in relation to the equator outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) (AOLR) data, for the 1979–2006 period. Spatial averages of the AOLR ( $\overline {AOLR} $ ) over the CAM for the ONR periods are obtained. These periods correspond to 25 pentads centered on the mean pentad for the ONR. The sign changes from positive to negative of the $\overline {AOLR} $ for the ONR periods indicate the transition from dry to wet season. Composites of several variables are done for pentads before and after the ONR dates. These composites show physically consistent features. The potential of the $\overline {AOLR} $ time series as an index for monitoring tasks is analyzed. The results here show that the $\overline {AOLR} $ for the ONR period captures the transition from dry to wet conditions in the CAM area during 2006. The advantages of this method are discussed. The new simple method proposed here seems to be efficient in determining the ONR in the CAM.     

On the relations of the rainfall variability and distribution with the mean rainfall over India

Summary Along with averages, rainfall variability and distribution are important climatological information. In this study, using 114 years (1871–1984) data of 306 stations, it is demonstrated that the variability and spatial distribution of annual, summer monsoon and monthly rainfall are highly dependent upon the respective period mean rainfall variation over India. The magnitude of three selected absolute measures of variability, e.g. standard deviation, absolute mean deviation and mean absolute interannual variability is found to increase linearly with mean rainfall.In order to describe the relation between the rainfall frequency distribution and the mean rainfall, a linear regression between the rainfall amount expected with a specified exceedance/non-exceedance probability and the mean rainfall amount is presented. Highly significant linear curves for a large number of probabilities specified in an average probability diagram clearly demonstrate the dependence of the rainfall frequency distribution on mean rainfall over India.With 8 Figures