Surface Temperature Anomalies in the River Niger Basin Development Authority Areas, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigates the trends in temperature in the Upper and Lower Niger Basin Development Authority Areas using standardized Anomaly Index, Gaussian Low Pass and Spearman’s correlation coefficient. From the data collected and analyzed, the mean annual temperature and mean annual maximum temperature demonstrated pronounced temporal increasing trend in the period 1951-2010 while the mean annual minimum temperature showed no trend. The rate of increase in mean annual temperature, mean annual maximum and minimum temperatures was 0.45°C, 0.40°C and 0.20°C respectively. The mean annual maximum temperature warmed faster than the mean annual minimum leading to increase in diurnal range of temperature. The annual temperature anomaly in the study area tracks the observed anomalies for the Northern Hemisphere in the 20th century. The decadal temperature increase is very small particularly as from 1980.