TY  - JOUR
A1  - Samimi, C.
A1  - Fink, A. H.
A1  - Paeth, H.
T1  - The 2007 flood in the Sahel: causes, characteristics and its presentation in the media and FEWS NET
JF  - Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
N2  - During the rainy season in 2007, reports about exceptional rains and floodings in the Sahel were published in the media, especially in August and September. Institutions and organizations like the World Food Programme (WFP) and FEWS NET put the events on the agenda and released alerts and requested help. The partly controversial picture was that most of the Sahel faced a crisis caused by widespread floodings. Our study shows that the rainy season in 2007 was exceptional with regard to rainfall amount and return periods. In many areas the event had a return period between 1 and 50 yr with high spatial heterogeneity, with the exception of the Upper Volta basin, which yielded return periods of up to 1200 yr. Despite the strong rainfall, the interpretation of satellite images show that the floods were mainly confined to lakes and river beds. However, the study also proves the difficulties in assessing the meteorological processes and the demarcation of flooded areas in satellite images without ground truthing. These facts and the somewhat vague and controversial reports in the media and FEWS NET demonstrate that it is crucial to thoroughly analyze such events at a regional and local scale involving the local population.
KW  - prediction
KW  - satellite rainfall products
KW  - tropical North-Africa
KW  - West-Africa
KW  - climate change
KW  - summer rainfall
KW  - variability
KW  - SST
KW  - teleconnection
KW  - validation
Y1  - 2012
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-131790
VL  - 12
IS  - 2
SP  - 313
EP  - 325
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Aich, Valentin
A1  - Akhundzadah, Noor Ahmad
A1  - Knuerr, Alec
A1  - Khoshbeen, Ahmad Jamshed
A1  - Hattermann, Fred
A1  - Paeth, Heiko
A1  - Scanlon, Andrew
A1  - Paton, Eva Nora
T1  - Climate change in Afghanistan deduced from reanalysis and coordinated regional climate downscaling experiment (CORDEX)—South Asia Simulations
JF  - Climate
N2  - Past and the projected future climate change in Afghanistan has been analyzed systematically and differentiated with respect to its different climate regions to gain some first quantitative insights into Afghanistan’s vulnerability to ongoing and future climate changes. For this purpose, temperature, precipitation and five additional climate indices for extremes and agriculture assessments (heavy precipitation; spring precipitation; growing season length (GSL), the Heat Wave Magnitude Index (HWMI); and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)) from the reanalysis data were examined for their consistency to identify changes in the past (data since 1950). For future changes (up to the year 2100), the same parameters were extracted from an ensemble of 12 downscaled regional climate models (RCM) of the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)-South Asia simulations for low and high emission scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5). In the past, the climatic changes were mainly characterized by a mean temperature increase above global level of 1.8 °C from 1950 to 2010; uncertainty with regard to reanalyzed rainfall data limited a thorough analysis of past changes. Climate models projected the temperature trend to accelerate in the future, depending strongly on the global carbon emissions (2006–2050 Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5/8.5: 1.7/2.3 °C; 2006–2099: 2.7/6.4 °C, respectively). Despite the high uncertainty with regard to precipitation projections, it became apparent that the increasing evapotranspiration is likely to exacerbate Afghanistan’s already existing water stress, including a very strong increase of frequency and magnitude of heat waves. Overall, the results show that in addition to the already extensive deficiency in adaptation to current climate conditions, the situation will be aggravated in the future, particularly in regard to water management and agriculture. Thus, the results of this study underline the importance of adequate adaptation to climate change in Afghanistan. This is even truer taking into account that GSL is projected to increase substantially by around 20 days on average until 2050, which might open the opportunity for extended agricultural husbandry or even additional harvests when water resources are properly managed.
KW  - climate change
KW  - Afghanistan
KW  - Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)-South Asia
KW  - trend analysis
KW  - Heat Wave Magnitude Index (HWMI)
KW  - Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)
KW  - growing season length (GSL)
Y1  - 2017
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-198024
SN  - 2225-1154
VL  - 5
IS  - 2
ER  -