Improving rainfall monitoring using commercial microwave link data in Burkina Faso: Results from three years of processing

Moumouni Djibo; Christian Chwala; Ali Doumounia; Julius Polz; Maximilian Graf; Wend Yam Serge Boris Ouédraogo; Serge Roland Sanou; Moumouni Sawadogo; Idrissa Guira; Harald Kunstmann; François Zougmoré

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-12445

[Back] [Session AS1.13]

EGU22-12445

https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-12445

EGU General Assembly 2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Improving rainfall monitoring using commercial microwave link data in Burkina Faso: Results from three years of processing

Moumouni Djibo^1,2, Christian Chwala^1,3, Ali Doumounia^2,4, Julius Polz³, Maximilian Graf³, Wend Yam Serge Boris Ouédraogo², Serge Roland Sanou^2,5, Moumouni Sawadogo², Idrissa Guira⁶, Harald Kunstmann^1,3, and François Zougmoré²

Moumouni Djibo et al.

¹Institute of Geography, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
²Laboratoire de Matériaux et d’Environnement (LA.ME), Université Joseph KI-ZERBO, Ouagadougou, Burkina FAso; 03 BP 7021 Ouagadougou 03
³Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Campus Alpin, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
⁴Ecole Normale Supérieure, 01 BP 1757 ,Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
⁵Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électronique des Postes (ARCEP), 01 BP 6437, Ouagadougou 01 Burkina Faso
⁶Telecel Faso SA, 08 BP 11059 Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Commercial Microwave Link (CML) data can provide important rainfall information, in particular in regions with low density of rain gauges and with no radar coverage. We have set up and operate a CML data acquisition (DAQ) system for Burkina Faso and report on the first larger scale analysis of the derived rainfall information.

Our real-time DAQ system started as a pilot project covering only eight CMLs and was gradually extended. For the monsoon season 2020 and 2021 it collected data for more than 1000 CMLs in Burkina Faso with a temporal resolution of one minute. Our first analysis is focusing on the 300 CMLs which operate in the frequency range between 11 GHz and 13 GHz in and around the city of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. We carry out a comparison with official daily rain gauge data, both for individual CMLs as well as for CML-derived rainfall maps. Our results for the period of the 2019, 2020 and 2021 rainy season indicate good performance of the CML rainfall information, with a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.8 and higher.

The processing of the longer CMLs in the frequency range between 7 GHz and 9 GHz, which connect the urban centers in Burkina Faso, currently is in progress. To tackle the challenge of noisy dry periods we are investigating the use of cloud cover and cloud type information from MSG SEVIRI data.

How to cite: Djibo, M., Chwala, C., Doumounia, A., Polz, J., Graf, M., Ouédraogo, W. Y. S. B., Sanou, S. R., Sawadogo, M., Guira, I., Kunstmann, H., and Zougmoré, F.: Improving rainfall monitoring using commercial microwave link data in Burkina Faso: Results from three years of processing, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-12445, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-12445, 2022.