Author(s)

Alikalifa Sanogo^1*, Prince Appiah Owusu¹, Roland Songotu Kabange¹, Bakary Issa Djire², Racheal Fosu Donkoh¹, Nasser Dia¹

¹Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Kumasi Technical University, Kumasi, Ghana.
²Department of Mathematical Sciences, Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, USA.

As an extended period of unusually dry weather conditions without sufficient rain, drought poses enormous risk on societies. Characterized by the absence of precipitation for long periods of time, often resulting in water scarcity, droughts are increasingly posing significant environmental challenges. Drought is therefore considered an important element in the management of water resources, especially groundwater resources during drought. This study therefore sought to investigate the rainfall variability and the frequency of drought for the period 1991 to 2020 in Bamako based on monthly rainfall data from Bamako-Senou gauge station. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) for 12-month, 6-month and 3-month timescales and the SPI for annual totals were used to characterized drought in the study area (Bamako). Univariate parametric probability distributions such as Normal, Log-normal, Gumbel type I and Pearson type III (P3) distributions were fitted with drought variables (severity and duration) for future planning and management. Non-parametric test such as Mann-Kendall trend test was also used to detect trend in annual rainfall data. The results showed that based on 12-month SPI, Bamako experienced two (02) extreme droughts one in July 2002 (SPI = -2.2165) and another in June 2015 (SPI = -2.0598 QUOTE SPI=-2.0598 ). Drought years represented 46.67% for the overall periods according to the SPI for annual totals. The result further indicated that based on the goodness of fit test, the P3 distribution represents the best fitted distribution to both drought severity and duration over Bamako. Bamako is expected to experience several severe severities with higher and shorter duration in the future. Severities with 1, 2, 6, and 10-month duration had return periods ranged from 2.4 to 3.8 years, while 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, and 100-year return periods had 18.51, 26.08, 33.25, 35.50, 42.38, and 49.14 severities, respectively, and durations associated to these severities were 19.8, 26.9, 33.5, 35.6, 42, and 48.2 months, respectively.

Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Rainfall Variability, Univariate Proba-bility Distribution, Drought, Bamako

Sanogo, A. , Owusu, P. , Kabange, R. , Djire, B. , Donkoh, R. and Dia, N. (2023) Meteorological Drought Detection and Forecast Using Standardized Precipitation Index and Univariate Distribution Models: Case Study of Bamako, Mali. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 11, 30-55. doi: 10.4236/gep.2023.117003.