Evidence of Climate variability by the Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Temperature in the City of Sokoto

Abstract

Temperature is crucial in observing changes occurring in the environment, such as climate change. Climate change is caused by the emission of excessive greenhouse gas and has been acknowledged as the main cause of various environmental impacts such as an increase in the flood scenario, frequent droughts, increasing wildfires, and heatwaves in various parts of the world. Temperature behaviour which has been studied in the city of Sokoto was used as a yardstick to check for the presence of variance in climate. Temperature data were gotten from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) that spanned thirty-one years (1980–2010) was used for this study. ANOVA and the Mann Kendall trend test were used to analyze the data used. The ANOVA findings revealed that the maximum and minimum temperatures differed significantly between the months. The Mann-Kendall trend test results suggest an increasing trend in maximum temperature and a declining trend in minimum temperature in the annual statistics. The monthly trend was made up of both increasing and decreasing trends. The city of Sokoto being located in the region of the Sahel savannah has very sensitive to minor changes in climate variance, hence this result will help in the planning of agriculture-related activities such as planting time, type of crops to plant, type of animals to be reared, types of animal diseases to provide vaccines for, etc.