Potential Impacts of Projected Mid-twenty-first Century Climate Change on the Hydrology of the Nasia Catchment, West Africa

In this study, the coupled surface water-groundwater model, MIKE-SHE has been calibrated to observed streamflow and groundwater heads spanning 2000-2009 for the Nasia sub-catchment in the White Volta Basin, West Africa. The calibrated model has been used to project the mid-twenty-first century hydrology of the region. Bias-correction has also been applied to daily precipitation and monthly average temperature projections for the period 2010-2050 to derive the meteorological forcing data required to drive the model. The climate projections have been drawn from ten Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) relatively high resolution (less than two degrees latitude/longitude) climate models under the representative concentration pathway, RCP8.5. Here, we present simulated mid-twenty-first century hydrologic (streamflow and groundwater) changes over the Nasia sub-catchment with MIKE-SHE forced with the bias-corrected CMIP5 climate projections.