Climate-Related Extreme Events with High-Resolution Regional Simulations: Assessing the Effects of Climate Change Scenarios in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

We have applied a Bayesian framework for the analysis and testing of possible non-stationarities in extreme meteorological events in an area around Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Considering the results obtained for the historical period (1950-2005), it can be seen that, for a given exceedance probability, the intensities of extreme temperature and extreme consecutive dry days ECDD data are positively correlated. The higher values of extreme temperature and ECDD are identified at the Eastern part of the domain. This result suggests that those areas can be more likely exposed to desertification processes. Some of these areas are also coincident with areas in which extreme rainfall events may occur, and this combination can be a factor amplifying the possibility of flood events. Looking at the effects of the two climate change scenarios considered (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), different patterns were found for the three variables analyzed; whereas, the ECDD data indicate that the stationary model is the one that dominates most of the solutions. The extreme temperature and extreme precipitation show remarkable trends in both scenarios. In this paper, analyses of the spatial distribution of the extreme events and the temporal trends observed when considering scenarios of climate change are performed.