Climate Change Signals Over Senegal River Basin Using Regional Climate Models of the CORDEX Africa Simulations

This study provides an overview of the impact of a statistical bias correction based on histogram equalization functions on a set of high resolution climate simulations over the Senegal River Basin. Regarding the future changes of extreme precipitation (greater than 50 mm), the models diverge in predicting heavy rainfall events in the majority of the basin. However, an increase of extreme precipitation is found around the Guinean Highlands. The results show also an increase of dry day's length and a decrease of wet days spells by all the RCMs, except one model that shows an opposite change of these climate indices. The bias correction affects mainly the magnitude of the climate change signals of extreme precipitation. Changes under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP8.5) are the most pronounced with uncorrected data. Bias corrected RCMs data are potentially useful for climate change impact studies over the Senegal River Basin. This study highlights a convergence of all RCMs (except for RCA RCM) in projecting a decrease of wet days and an increase of dry days over the Senegal River Basin.