Abstract:
The study investigates how the rising global temperature will affect the spatial pattern of rainfall and consequently drought in
West Africa. The precipitation and potential evapotranspiration variables that are obtained from the Rossby Centre regional
atmospheric model (RCA4) and driven by ten (10) global climate models under the RCP8.5 scenario were used. The model
data were obtained from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) and analyzed at four
specific global warming levels (GWLs) (i.e., 1.5 °C, 2.0 °C, 2.5 °C, and 3.0 °C) above the pre-industrial level. This study
utilized four (4) indices: the standardized precipitation index, the precipitation concentration index, the precipitation concentration
degree, and the precipitation concentration period over West Africa to explore the spatiotemporal variations in the
characteristics of precipitation concentrations. Additionally, studying the impact of the four GWLs on consecutive dry days,
consecutive wet days, and frequency of the intense rainfall events led to a better understanding of the spatiotemporal pattern
of extreme precipitation. The results show that, at each GWL studied, the onset of rainfall comes 1 month earlier in the Gulf
of Guinea compared to the historical period (1971–2000) with increasing rainfall intensity in the whole study domain, and
the northeastern part of the study area becomes wetter. The rainfall concentration is uniformly distributed over the Gulf of
Guinea and the Savanna zone for both the historical period and RCP8.5 scenario, while the Sahel zone which has shown an
irregular concentration of rainfall for the historical period shows a uniform concentration of rainfall under all four GWLs.
