PROMISE Report on the third 6 months of progress on Work Package WP3000 NERC - CEH Wallingford August 2001

Emma Tate

The milestone for Year II of the project for Work Package 3000 is the adaptation and testing of the detailed hydrological model for West Africa, to assess the impacts of land cover and climate change on water resources.

Emma Tate attended the PROMISE 1st Annual Meeting at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, on Sunday 10th June 2001, followed by the conference on climate variability and land surface processes.  The modelling of WP3000 was presented at this conference. At the annual meeting, this year's milestone was agreed, and the future time horizons for the climate change scenarios and land use change scenarios were discussed.

In Year I, the basic modelling data had been gathered and formatted for the West African region, and the preliminary model had been set up. In this third six month period, a preliminary run of the model has been made, thereby ensuring that all data are consistent and acceptable. Some of the modelling input data have been refined using more detailed data sets and information from a wider range of sources. The calibration data for the model have also been supplemented with new information to provide a good basis for calibrating the flows from the model. Discussions have taken place with scientists from WP2100, with regard to developing the water resources model to take account of land use change, in line with the scenarios and data that WP2100 is employing. A new, high resolution soil classes data set has been obtained and is being adapted for the West African region, as part of the land-use change application. Research is taking place into deriving the necessary modelling characteristics for the new soil classes to be included in the model. There are currently no factors which may prevent us from meeting the Year II milestone.