Water vapour content and transport over southern Africa and adjacent oceans are examined. Early summer rainfall over the northern and central interior of South Africa tends to be associated with baroclinic controls whereas late-summer rainfall is barotropic in origin. This is reflected in the northwesterly water vapour transport from an Atlantic Ocean source by middle and upper tropospheric westerly waves in early summer. A thermally indirect Ferrel cell, indicated-from energetics, COpIU1nSthe· temperate nature of the early-summer atmosphere over southern Africa. Late summer water vapour transport, in contrast, is strongly from the tropics, with' a reduced eddy component, indicating an important tropical control on late SUmmerrainfall especially in terms of fluctuations in the position of the ascending limb of .the Walker cell Over southern Africa. The Hadley cell is of importance to the late summer rainfall in that dry (wet) years are associated with an anomalous cell OVereastern (central) South Africa such that low level vapour transport is southerly (northerly). The anticyclone over the eastern parts of southern Africa, coupled with. a trough over the interior (especially at the 700 hPa pressure level), is important for the introduction of water vapour over the subcontinent in wet and dry years and for tropical-temperate trough case studies. Water vapour source regions differ from early summer (Atlantic Ocean) to late summer (Indian Ocean), which reflects the temperate. control on early and the tropical control on late summer circulation. The convergence of water vapour over southern Africa in wet years and during tropical-temperate troughs is not only important for cloud formation and precipitation, but also for latent heat release associated with convergent water vapour. Diabatic heating decreases the stability of the tropical atmosphere thereby resulting in increased vertical motion. It also forces an anomalous Badley circulation during wet late summers and tropical-temperate trough .cases as a result of complex energy transformations. Heating increases eddy available potential energy which is converted to zonal available potential energy by a thermally indirect circulation found in the tropics. The zonal potential energy is then converted to kinetic energy by the thermally direct Badley cell. Water vapour and its variations are thus important for the precipitation, heating and SUbsequent energy of the subtropical southern African atmosphere, / GR 2017

Several previous studies have found that various characteristics of the Indian monsoon rainfall have shown secular changes over the past century. In this study, using a gridded (1degree) daily rainfall dataset, we analyse the spatio-temporal characteristics of the intensity and duration of monsoon (June through September) rainfall for secular changes over the last 50 years. The characteristics of the duration of rain events are described by wet and dry spells. A wet/dry spell is defined as a period of consecutive days with rainfall above/below a particular threshold. We choose to use a threshold that is a function of the local climatological mean, given the spatial heterogeneity of mean monsoon rainfall. The wet and dry spells are then divided into three categories: short [1 to 7 days], moderate [8 to 10 days], long [11 and more days] and analysed for changes over the past 50 years [19512000]. We find that while the number of short duration wet spells show a significant increase over the last 50 years (~15% change), the number of long duration wet spells show a significant decrease (~25%). Furthermore, while the numbers of short duration dry periods have shown a significant increase, the moderate and long duration dry spells do not shown an appreciable change. This increase and decrease in the short and long duration wet spells offset each other and consequently the total number of rainy days during the season has not shown any significant change over the past 50 years. In addition to the duration of wet and dry spells, we also analysed for changes in the accumulated rainfall of the short, medium and long duration wet spells. Our analysis suggests that while the depth of accumulated rainfall in short duration wet spells has shown a significant increase (~20%), the depth of rain in the long duration spells has shown a significant decrease (~30%) in the past fifty years.

The temporal distribution of rainfall , viz. the distribution of rainfall intensity during a storm, is an important factor affecting the timing and magnitude of peak flow from a catchment and hence the flood-generating potential of rainfall events. It is also one of the primary inputs into hydrological models used for hydraulic design purposes. The use of short duration rainfall data inherently accounts for the temporal distribution of rainfall, however, there is a relative paucity of short duration data when compared to the more abundantly available daily data. One method of overcoming this is to disaggregate courser-scale data to a finer resolution, e.g. daily to hourly. A daily to hourly rainfall disaggregation model developed by Boughton (2000b) in Australia has been modified and applied in South Africa. The primary part of the model is the . distribution of R, which is the fraction of the daily total that occurs in the hour of maximum rainfall. A random number is used to sample from the distribution of R at the site of interest. The sample value of R determines the other 23 values, which then undergo a clustering procedure. This clustered sequence is then arranged into 1 of 24 possible temporal arrangements, depending when the hour the maximum rainfall occurs. The structure of the model allows for the production of 480 different temporal distributions with variation between uniform and non-uniform rainfall. The model was then regionalised to allow for application at sites where daily rainfall data, but no short duration data, were available. The model was evaluated at 15 different locations in differing climatic regions in South Africa. At each location, observed hourly rainfall data were aggregated to yield 24-hour values and these were then disaggregated using the methodology. Results show that the model is able to retain the daily total and most of the characteristics of the hourly rainfall at the site, for when both at-site and regional information are used. The model, however, is less capable of simulating statistics related to the sequencing of hourly rainfalls, e.g. autocorrelations. The model also tends to over-estimate design rainfalls, particularly for the shorter durations . / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

The thesis is concerned with development of efficient regional frequency analysis (RFA) approaches to estimate quantiles of hydrometeorological events. The estimates are necessary for various applications in water resources engineering. The classical approach to estimate quantiles involves fitting frequency distribution to at-site data. However, this approach cannot be used when data at target site are inadequate or unavailable to compute parameters of the frequency distribution. This impediment can be overcome through RFA, in which sites having similar attributes are identified to form a region, and information is pooled from all the sites in the region to estimate the quantiles at target site. The thesis proposes new approaches to RFA of precipitation, meteorological droughts and floods, and demonstrates their effectiveness. The approach proposed for RFA of precipitation overcomes shortcomings of conventional approaches with regard to delineation and validation of homogeneous precipitation regions, and estimation of precipitation quantiles in ungauged and data sparse areas. For the first time in literature, distinction is made between attributes/variables useful to form homogeneous rainfall regions and to validate the regions. Another important issue is that some of the attributes considered for regionalization vary dynamically with time. In conventional approaches, there is no provision to consider dynamic aspects of time varying attributes. This may lead to delineation of ineffective regions. To address this issue, a dynamic fuzzy clustering model (DFCM) is developed. The results obtained from application to Indian summer monsoon and annual rainfall indicated that RFA based on DFCM is more effective than that based on hard and fuzzy clustering models in arriving at rainfall quantile estimates. Errors in quantile estimates for the hard, fuzzy and dynamic fuzzy models based on the proposed approach are shown to be significantly less than those computed for Indian summer monsoon rainfall regions delineated in three previous studies. Overall, RFA based on DFCM and large scale atmospheric variables appeared promising. The performance of DFCM is followed by that of fuzzy and hard clustering models. Next, a new approach is proposed for RFA of meteorological droughts. It is suggested that homogeneous precipitation regions have to be delineated before proceeding to develop drought severity - areal extent - frequency (SAF) curves. Drought SAF curves are constructed at annual and summer monsoon time scales for each of the homogeneous rainfall regions that are newly delineated in India based on the proposed approach. They find use in assessing spatial characteristics and frequency of meteorological droughts. It overcomes shortcomings associated with classical approaches that construct SAF curves for political (e.g., state, country) and physiographic regions (e.g., river basin), based on spatial patterns of at-site values of drought indices in the study area, without testing homogeneity in rainfall. Advantage of the new approach can be noted especially in areas that have significant variations in temporal and spatial distribution of precipitation (possibly due to variations in topography, landscape and climate). The DFCM is extended to RFA of floods, and its effectiveness in prediction of flood quantiles is demonstrated by application to Godavari basin in India, considering precipitation as time varying attribute. Six new homogeneous regions are formed in Godavari basin and errors in quantile estimates based on those regions are shown to be significantly less than those computed based on sub-zones delineated in Godavari basin by Central Water Commission in a previous study.