Drought Identification through Climatic Variables

Temperature and rainfall are among the climatic variables required in determining the availability of water in an environment, especially for agricultural purposes and domestic consumption by man. However, there are concerns that these variables are being affected by global warming which thus necessitates the need to study their impact on the environment such as the identification of drought. The mean monthly temperature and rainfall data utilized in this work were obtained from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET), Lagos, Nigeria for the period 1981 to 2010, and analyzed using the descriptive statistical approach including the rainfall anomalies index. After the analysis, the results showed that a non-uniform pattern of changes in temperature was evident across the different stations considered in which the variations in the local temperature trends were not spatially uniform. Twelve of the stations (Calabar, Port-Harcourt, Owerri, Benin, Enugu, Lagos, Ondo, Ibadan, Ilorin, Maiduguri, Sokoto and Katsina) out of the 18 stations considered have their mean monthly temperature increasing, which shows that majority of these stations are experiencing warming. In essence, the rainfall anomaly index thus showed that there is an evidence of drought in some of these stations considered (Warri, Benin, Enugu, Minna, Nguru, Sokoto and Katsina). However, it is important to continually check for both temperature trends and rainfall anomalies for enhanced and good agricultural planning of a nation since it was discovered that each particular area has unique rainfall and temperature patterns which are non-consistent with each other.