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Lake Victoria is the largest tropical lake in the world and the source of river Nile, the longest river in the world. Due to prolonged precipitation above the average over the past two years, the lake water levels have increased surpassing the highest ever recorded of 13.41m in 1964. To mitigate the negative impacts on the people, navigation and developments in the flood zones, lake outflows were gradually increased from 1000cumecs to 2400cumecs. Isimba Hydropower Plant (HPP) with a reservoir capacity of 170 million cubic meters is the fourth hydropower plant along the upper Nile cascade with a design flood level of 1055m above sea level. Reservoir operation is constrained by the bridge construction and ferry operation works downstream which are affected by the increased discharges. There is also uncertainty of the incoming discharge magnitude and travel time due to lack of an upstream gauging station. This paper seeks to assess the reservoir response to the increasing flood conditions using Hydrologic Engineering software for flood routing and to model an operation water level (OWL) that optimizes power production and flood control whilst ensuring public safety of the downstream activities through real-time forecasts in the short term.

Lake Victoria storage and water levels are affected by changes in precipitation, evapotranspiration, tributary inflows and outflow in the single Nile River outlet at Owen Falls Dam. In May 1964, the lake reached its first highest recorded level of 13.46 m at the Jinja Pier that resulted into the Nile River outflow of 1910 m3/s. Consequently, the decision to construct Owen falls extension later in year 2000 was motivated by the risk assessment to mitigate the potential of regional hydrology reverting to the 1960s conditions. However, the catchment has consistently had above-normal precipitation coupled with accelerating land use changes that have resulted into higher inflows from the lake tributaries. In May 2020, the lake level surpassed the 1964 record, peaking at 13.47 m towards the end of May. These two occurrences (1964 and 2020) greatly affected hydropower generation, disrupted socio-economic activities around the lake and along the river and posed a threat on the safety of Nile Cascade dams. This paper therefore, presents the integrated multi-sectoral framework that was adopted to assess and mitigate the risks involved. The paper also identifies challenges, opportunities, interventions and lessons learnt from such risks and uncertainties.

Heavy rainfall in East Africa between late 2019 and mid 2020 caused devastating floods and landslides throughout the region. These rains drove the levels of Lake Victoria to a record-breaking maximum in the second half of May 2020. The combination of high lake levels, consequent shoreline flooding, and flooding of tributary rivers caused hundreds of casualties and damage to housing, agriculture and infrastructure in the riparian countries of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Media and government reports linked the heavy precipitation and floods to anthropogenic climate change, but a formal scientific attribution study has not been carried out so far. In this study, we characterise the spatial extent and impacts of the floods in the Lake Victoria basin, and then investigate to what extent human-induced climate change influenced the probability and magnitude of the record-breaking lake levels and associated flooding, by applying a multi-model extreme event attribution methodology. Using remote sensing-based flood mapping tools, we find that more than 29 thousand people living within a 50 km radius of the lake shorelines were affected by floods between April and July 2020. Precipitation in the basin was the highest recorded in at least three decades, causing lake levels to rise by 1.21 m between late 2019 and mid 2020. The flood, defined as a 6-month rise in lake levels as extreme as that observed in the lead-up to May 2020, is estimated to be a 63-year event in the current climate. Based on observations and climate model simulations, the best estimate is that the event has become more likely by a factor of 1.8 in the current climate compared to a pre-industrial climate, and that in the absence of anthropogenic climate change an event with the same return period would have led lake levels to rise by 7 cm less than observed. Nonetheless, uncertainties in the attribution statement are relatively large due to large natural variability, and include the possibility of no observed attributable change in the probability of the event (probability ratio, 95 % confidence interval 0.8–15.8) or in the magnitude of lake level rise during an event with the same return period (magnitude change, 95 % confidence interval 0–14 cm). In addition to anthropogenic climate change, other possible drivers of the floods and their impacts include human land and water management, the exposure and vulnerability of settlements and economic activities located in flood-prone areas, and modes of climate variability that modulate seasonal precipitation. The attribution statement could be strengthened by using a larger number of climate model simulations, as well as by quantitatively accounting for non-meteorological drivers of the flood and potential unforced modes of climate variability. By disentangling the role of anthropogenic climate change and natural variability in the high-impact 2020 floods in the Lake Victoria basin, this paper contributes to a better understanding of changing hydrometeorological extremes in East Africa and the African Great Lakes region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]