Climate Change and its Impact on Flooding in the Builsa North District of the Upper East Region

• Main Authors: Imoro Nimoo Abdulai, Kojo Appiah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Africa Development and Resources Research Institute (ADRRI) 2017-07-01
• Series: Journal of Agriculture and Food Sciences
• Online Access: https://journals.adrri.org/index.php/adrrijafs/article/view/338

Climate change coupled with knowledge of its resultant effect on precipitation levels is key since it can produce floods of varying degrees and levels. The Builsa North district in the Upper East Region of Ghana have been experiencing floods in recent years, recording an unprecedented flooding event in July, 2016. This study seeks to study how changes in the climate system would impact future flooding in the district. Predicting future changes in precipitation levels requires developing future climate scenarios. This study considered various land-use characteristics which served as variables upon which the future climate scenarios were developed. Three scenarios were developed; the Historical_2016 Scenario; the SGFF_2030 scenario; and the SGFS_2060, with resultant precipitation levels of 696.5mm, 463.869mm, 553.02mm respectively. These precipitation values were then integrated into the HydroCAD software with a 25 years return period, giving likely average future flood volumes in each sub-basin of;