Observed data of extreme rainfall events over the West African Sahel

Seyni Salack; Inoussa Abdou Saley; Jan Bliefernicht

doi:10.1016/j.dib.2018.09.001

Observed data of extreme rainfall events over the West African Sahel

Data Brief. 2018 Sep 6:20:1274-1278. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2018.09.001. eCollection 2018 Oct.

Authors

Seyni Salack¹, Inoussa Abdou Saley¹, Jan Bliefernicht²

Affiliations

¹ WASCAL Competence Center, Blvd Moammar El-khadafi, Ouagadougou 06, 06BP 9507 Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
² Institute for Geography, University of Augsburg, Germany.

Abstract

The data described in this article are sets of daily rainfall values derived from observed station records. The data was recorded by 72 in-situ rain gauges spread over the West African Sahel. The daily rainfall time series from synoptic, climate, agro-meteorological, and rainfall stations are assessed for quality and consistency before extreme values are extracted based on 90th, 95th, and 99th percentile thresholds. This data is free for use as part of the study "Scales for rating heavy rainfall events in West African Sahel" [1] (Salack et al., 2018). Complementary and up to date time series can be taken from WASCAL data infrastructure (WADI) geoportal https://wascal-dataportal.org/wascal_searchportal2/. This is a derived product (DP), made public in line with WASCAL׳s "3rd party data sharing policy" signed by the WASCAL member countries.

Keywords: Extreme rainfall; Percentile threshold; West African Sahel.