Changing Rainfall Inputs in the Volta Basin: Implications for Water Sharing in Ghana

Abstract

We present evidence from the analysis of gridded annual rainfall data that, increased variability and declining rainfall totals are the main cause of declining lake levels in the Volta basin above the Akosombo Dam. West Africa has undergone a period of diminished rainfall, punctuated by a series of severe droughts and marked by a shift in rainfall regime. As a result, lake levels behind the hydroelectric impoundment have fluctuated so widely at times that, power has had to be rationed. The trends in the spatial and temporal variability of annual rainfall in the riparian nations explain the low impoundment levels frequent in recent decades. The drying of Burkina Faso and Mali is particularly marked and synchronous to an apparent shift in the rainfall regime in Ghana towards a longer dry season and vanishing short dry spell, the effects which tend to negate each other. The various regional and temporal associations between El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon (ENSO) are investigated as a possible cause of variation across the basin. The strengths of these associations and low frequency shifts suggest an unfortunate correspondence between national and climatological boundaries which may serve to heighten regional political tensions resulting from ENSO effects. Lack of re-investment in the Akosombo Dam as a result of management policies, political and pre-construction contractual agreements have all conspired in recent decades to make these hydro-climatological changes more devastating.