West Africa and its people are very vulnerable to climate variability and changes. Increasing the knowledge of plausible trends of rainfall dry spell lengths (DSL) in the rainy season, and of runoff, enables the assessment of vulnerability and adaptive capacity of the system. These predictions are crucial from a water management and policy perspective. The analyses based on regional climate models (RCMs) and observed datasets exhibit non‐stationary behavior and an increase of DSL. Our results highlight the difficulty of selected RCMs to reproduce present climate and their divergence in predicting future climate. Impacts on water resources depend not only on climate forcing but also on land surface conditions. Copyright © 2011 Royal Meteorological Society

In this study, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model is used to assess changes in surface runoff between the baseline (1995–2014) and future (2031–2050) periods in the Tougou watershed ( 37 km 2 ) in Burkina Faso. The study uses a combination of land use maps (for current and future periods) and a bias-corrected ensemble of 9 CMIP6 climate models, under two warming scenarios. An increase in rainfall (13.7% to 18.8%) is projected, which is the major contributor to the increase in surface runoff (24.2% to 34.3%). The land use change narrative (i.e. conversion of bare areas to croplands) is expected to decrease in surface runoff, albeit minor in comparison to the effect of future climate change. Similar findings are observed for annual maximum surface runoff. This study sheds light on the need to consider simultaneously future climate and land use in framing water management policies.

Appropriate methods and tools accessibility for bi-dimensional flow simulation leads to their weak use for floods assessment and forecasting in West African countries, particularly in urban areas where huge losses of life and property are recorded. To mitigate flood risks or to elaborate flood adaptation strategies, there is a need for scientific information on flood events. This paper focuses on a numerical tool developed for urban inundation extent simulation due to extreme tropical rainfall in Ouagadougou city. Two-dimensional (2D) shallow-water equations are solved using a finite volume method with a Harten, Lax, Van Leer (HLL) numerical fluxes approach. The Digital Elevation Model provided by NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) was used as the main input of the model. The results have shown the capability of the numerical tool developed to simulate flow depths in natural watercourses. The sensitivity of the model to rainfall intensity and soil roughness coefficient was highlighted through flood spatial extent and water depth at the outlet of the watershed. The performance of the model was assessed through the simulation of two flood events, with satisfactory values of the Nash–Sutcliffe criterion of 0.61 and 0.69. The study is expected to be useful for flood managers and decision makers in assessing flood hazard and vulnerability.