ABSTRACT

Climate change and variability is a global issue that needs to be given proper attention because of its impacts on agriculture and socio-economic activities. Annual rainfall and temperature data for four decades (1971-2016) for Enugu state were obtained from Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET), Enugu, and analyzed in order to establish climate variability in the area. The aim of this research is to analyse the rainfall and temperature variations and its implication on climate change over the study area, it also sought the relationship between rainfall and temperature variables. The return period rainfall of 10 years and the moving average was determined. Various statistical models were used for analyses. Time series analysis for temporal and spatial distribution patterns of the rainfall and temperature variables. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was employed to seek the relationship between rainfall and temperatures variables. The ANOVA analysis was used to compute the percentage variation of Temperature. Return period analysis for rainfall amount and moving average analysis were also determined; the latter was used to show the rate at which rainfall amount occurs at the study area while the former was used the amount of rainfall that is likely to occur more often in 10 years. From the analysis it was established that the minimum amount of rainfall occurred in 1981 with the sum of 913.1mm while the highest amounts of rainfall occurred in 1997 with a value of 2262.4mm.The1997 temperature was the hottest of all with almost 36°c.. The results indicate that a (R) = 0.163 and (R2 ) of 0.027 that the relationship is negatively significant at 0.05 level of test at the 2-tail test. The matrix line graph showed that maximum temperature had a R2= 0.017, minimum temperature had a R2= 0.012 while average temperature had R2 = 0.022 against the annual rainfall. The return period indicated that 2100mm of rainfall will likely occur at 0.5 exceedence probability level. There were more high and even distribution of rainfall and temperature from the late 1990s to 2000s while the 1970s and 1980s had low and uneven distribution. Finally, it was concluded that climate change affects rainfall and temperature variables which will likely have direct effects on economic and social activities of the study area due to the decadal variations but has not reached an alarming state and environmental and climatologic measures were proposed in order to check-mate climate change.