Rising Temperature and Declining Rainfall – a Threat to Water Security in Northern Region of Ghana

Abstract

This research provides an insight into the threat of water resources in the northern region due to rising temperature and declining rainfall with the broad objective of analysing temperature and rainfall trends and their significance. A 50-year climate data from 1961-2010 on temperature and rainfall was analysed to determine the trends using temperature and rainfall anomalies (deviation from the mean) as suggested by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The data series was further subjected to Mann-Kendal test to confirm the trends and their significance. The data was analysed using Microsoft excel and XLSTAT software. The results showed an increasing temperature and declining rainfall trends of the anormalized data and this was confirmed by the Mann-Kendal’s test. The Mann-Kendal’s test shows that there is no trend in the rainfall data series even though rainfall is declining which means that the evidence is not sufficient to conclude at 95% level of confidence that a trend exist. However, there exist increasing temperature trends of the data series. Additionally, the trend in declining rainfall was found to be statistically insignificant while the temperature trend was statistically significant. The research which was concluded with suggested strategies to avert water scarcity in the mist of climate change will be relevant to decision and policy makers, water users and providers as well as NGOs and other stakeholders.