Ghana – Monitoring of the Rainy Season
On this web page, Weather Impact provides weather and climate information for the monitoring of the rainy season in Ghana. This service is part of a portfolio of weather and climate related services for the horticultural sector in Ghana, in collaboration with TAHMO and Delft University of Technology. This project is funded by The Dutch Embassy of Ghana.
Below are presented:
- Map of the current status of the rain season
- Probabilistic forecast of the rain season
- 5-day weather forecast downscaled for south of Ghana (WRF)
- 15-day weather forecast (ECMWF)
- Overview of current rainfall situation
Rain Season Status and Probability of the Onset
Rain Season Status
Probability of Rain Season
5-day Downscaled Forecast with WRF model
The WRF model is run nightly using the 12 UTC ECMWF HRES run from the previous day as boundary conditions. It produces hourly forecasts for a period of 5 days, starting from a lead time of +36 hours relative to the ECMWF run.
NOTE: the forecasts produced by the WRF model are experimental and are provided for research purposes only. We strongly advise against making any critical decisions based on these forecasts.
15-day Weather Forecast
Click on a district to visualize the daily forecast for that location.
P amount
P chance
In the “P amount” tab, the forecasted precipitation amounts are displayed as bar plots, computed using the ECMWF IFS ensemble model. The whiskers indicate the 30th and 90th percentiles of the ensemble values, providing insight into the spread of the model predictions.
Current Weather Indicators
An overview of the current weather situation is shown below. The following variables are visualized:
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- P amount: the total precipitation amount over the period in mm
- P chance: the precipitation chance in % (only forecast)
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The maps show the variable’s average over the period indicated by the cursor bar. The only exceptions are “P amount” and “PET”, for which the total accumulated value is displayed.
TIP: the Current Weather maps can be useful to recognize the onset of the rainy season. Selecting the “P amount” panel and moving the bottom cursor from left to right, it is possible to have an overview of the rainfall observed in the previous month and expected in the next two weeks.
A progressive increase of the amount of rain is likely to indicate the start of the rainy season if observed in all time frames. However, if less rain is expected in the time frame “Next 15 days” or “Days 8-15“, this might suggest the occurrence of dry spells or of a false start of the rainy season. Lastly, high values of precipitation throughout all time frames indicates that the rainy season is currently happening, while the opposite indicates the presence of the dry season.
P amount
P chance
This data is developed by Weather Impact BV. The data is based on weather forecasts and do not necessarily reflect reality. No liability is accepted as a result of use of this data.
