Temperature and rainfall trend in Agbani, Enugu State Southeastern Nigeria

Abstract

Complementing climate forecasts with historical data is one way to develop usable climate information for agricultural producers. Farmers are the major end-users of climate information therefore, this study analyzed the trend of rainfall and temperature in Agbani Enugu State. The daily meteorological parameters were acquired using the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) from January 2012 to December 2019. The daily data were analyzed using the Excel package to obtain average monthly data. The Trend Regression analysis was used to predict a trend in rainfall and temperature from 2020 up to 2050. The result showed that 2018 recorded the highest rainfall followed by 2015, and 2012 recorded the lowest rainfall. The mean monthly rainfall indicated that January has the lowest rainfall of 53.5 mm, while July recorded the highest rainfall of 2,624.3 mm. The month of March has the highest mean temperature July and August recorded the lowest temperature over the eight years. The trend model forecast indicated Yt = 152.53+0.155t for rainfall and Yt = 27.747+0.02398t for temperature from 2020 to 2050. The result shows an incremental trend of 0.155 mm and 0.2398°C in rainfall and temperature, respectively, associated with every unit increase in period(t). It is recommended that farmers should expect a wetter and hotter climate from 2020 to 2050.