Trend and Change Analysis of Monthly and Seasonal Temperature Series over North-Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

Temperature is one of the indicative factors of climate change which is one of the very important issues discussed in the recent two decades. The present research aimed at studying temporal and seasonal variation in temperature over North-eastern Nigeria, during the period 1981–2010. Trends in annual and seasonal temperature series were analyzed using Mann-Kendall test. The analysis revealed that temperature ranged between 20.2 - 31.8°C among all the locations, and over months and years. Temperature was significantly higher (P<0.01) in April compare to all the other months. The trends, both annual and seasonal, showed increasing tendency in temperature during the period 1981-2010. There was significant increase (positive trend) in temperature in all studied locations (less Taraba where trend was negative), indicating Nigeria is experiencing a rise in air surface temperature too. Since most of the Nigerian population is dependent on economic activities that are temperature sensitive, findings here implicate Nigeria is also one of the susceptible to the attendant consequences of global warming. Thus, the models developed in this study could assist the prediction of temperatures over the locations it covered.