Matthew OJ
Institute of Ecology and Environmental Studies,
Ile-Ife
Nigeria
Research Article
Uncertainties in the Estimation of Global Observational Network Datasets of Precipitation over West Africa
Author(s): Matthew OJ, Abiye OE, Sunmonu LA, Ayoola MA and Oluyede OTMatthew OJ, Abiye OE, Sunmonu LA, Ayoola MA and Oluyede OT
This study assessed the uncertainty in estimating long-term (1971-2010) mean precipitation, its inter-annual variability, and linear trend of three network observation datasets over West Africa. A reference data, defined as a multi-dataset ensemble of precipitation observations of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) and the University of Delaware (UDEL), all at horizontal resolutions of 0.5� by 0.5� were obtained and used in this study. Uncertainties in these climatological parameters of precipitation at both annual and seasonal time scales were examined in terms of inter-dataset variability using signalto- noise ratio (SNR), correlation, root-mean-square errors and the normalised standard deviation. Results showed that the mean, inter-annual variability and trends climatology varied for different datasets. .. View More»
