Climate Data Information

Generally speaking, as far as the earth’s water is concerned what goes up (evaporation) must come down (rainfall). One of the major tenets of the climate change community is that with global warming this might no longer be true: that with increasing temperatures more water will be held in the atmosphere. To quantify this requires accurate measure of the variables involved. I have in an earlier post looked at the decline in temperature measurement (a major determinant in what goes up). This post looks at rainfall where the situation is worse. First let me note that measuring rainfall has one important difference from measuring temperature. Rainfall is much more variable than temperature both temporarily and spatially. A significant depth of rain can fall in a few minutes. Most places on earth can sometimes go for days with no rain. Similarly, it can rain heavily on one side of town and a few kilometres away there be no rain at all. Getting an accurate estimate of rainfall over a given...

Climate Change Impact Part 12: Example – Kagera Basin (Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Tanzania) Summary The Kagera basin flows into Lake Victoria and as such it forms part of the Nile Basin. An extensive data base of climate and flows was available and was used to calibrate the HYSIM hydrological model to 22 sub-basins. Climate projections show that rainfall is projected to increase but temperature (and hence evapotranspiration) is also expected to increase. Whilst the two changes to some extent balance out, the increase in temperature still has important implications for the future of agriculture. Introduction The Kagera River Basin and its tributaries flow within four countries (Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Tanzania). The Kagera River flows into Lake Victoria which in turn forms part of the Nile River Basin. The aim of the study was to assess the water resources potential of the basin and also to estimate the potential effect of climate change. Figure 1 is a map...