Arima Model for Forecasting of Monthly Rainfall and Temperature in the Lake Victoria Basin

Abstract

The rise in global temperature which is global warming has lead to erratic and disruptive weather pattern in several regions of the world including the area surrounding the Lake Victoria basin. Likewise, economic activities associated with Lake Victoria and its Basin such as agriculture, fishing, mining and transportation are significantly affected by this climatic changes. The primary cause of negative impact that stems from this changes is lack of reliable information that can be used to predict and address the climatic variations within the basin. The objective of this research is to identify a suitable time series model that can be used to analyse and predict this weather variations and pattern around the Lake Victoria basin. This research uses Box jenskin methodology to build ARIMA(2,0,1) model for rainfall pattern around Lake Victoria basin. The data is obtained from three Kenya Meteorological Department weather stations as secondary data from the years 2008 to 2014. In this research, data from the years 2008 to 2010 was used to estimate the values for the years 2011 to 2013. The relationship from the research showed a strong positive relationship which indicates high level of accuracy on predictability by the model.