Spatiotemporal variation of rainfall and occurrence of extreme events over Burundi during 1960 to 2010
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Spatiotemporal variation of rainfall and occurrence of extreme events over Burundi during 1960 to 2010 Athanase Nkunzimana 1,2 & Shuoben Bi 1
&
Tingting Jiang 1 & Weiting Wu 1 & Muhammad Ilyas Abro 3
Received: 9 April 2018 / Accepted: 6 February 2019 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2019
Abstract The occurrence of extreme rainfall events, associated mass movements, and flash floods especially during recent years motivated the study on the spatiotemporal rainfall variability over Burundi. This study used data from distinct sources: surface observation (1981–2010), Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Global Precipitation Climate Centre (GPCC) for the period 1960–2010, and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the period 2001–2017. This study analyzed the main features of rainfall over the study domain and demonstrated that extreme rainfall contributed to mass movements and flash flood hazard that characterize some sections of the study domain. Analysis revealed a decrease of rainfall and number of rainy days, supported by a generally decreasing trend for annual and seasonal rainfall. The short rains that occur during September– December experienced significant variability than long rains that occur during March–May, especially from 1990s. The study further identified the west, east, and north-east parts of Burundi to be more sensitive to extreme events than other sections of the study domain. The analysis carried out the existence of high variability of rainfall which starts from 1985 with significant decrease of rainfall from 1990. The occurrence of extreme rainfall during short rains has been attributed to wind circulation anomaly due to influx of air mass from Congo basin, local topography, and local wind patterns. This study contributes to understand the spatiotemporal rainfall variability, the relationship between extreme rainfall events, and its possible impact on territory management and will help in forecasting and monitoring future extreme events over Burundi. Keywords Extreme rainfall . Rainfall . Mass movements: flash flood . Burundi
Introduction Climate extremes and extreme weather have been observed since 1950 (Field et al. 2012) and have affected socioeconomic activities of many countries including Burundi. In the study Editorial handling: Ozgur Kisi * Athanase Nkunzimana [email protected] * Shuoben Bi [email protected] 1
School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
2
Department of Geography, University of Burundi, P.O. Box 5142, Bujumbura, Burundi
3
Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
conducted under World Meteorological Organization (WMO) projects, Lanza et al. (2005) reported that events with extremely high precipitation intensities affect all types of daily life needs such as transportation, destruction of crops, and vegetation in many countries. E
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