Temporal Dynamics and Trend Analysis of Areal Rainfall in Muger Subwatershed, Upper Blue Nile, Ethiopia

Abstract

This study was employed to investigate the temporal variability and trend analysis of areal rainfall in the Muger subwatershed, Upper Blue Nile, Ethiopia. The study was run over the following procedures to handle the main objective: (1) determining the areal rainfall from gauged point rainfall using the Thiessen polygon method, (2) grouping the months in the season according to the study area, (3) evaluating the temporal dynamics of annual and seasonal areal rainfall using the coefficient of variation (CV), standard anomaly index (SAI), and precipitation concentration index (PCI), and (4) analyzing the trend of annual and seasonal areal rainfall using modified Mann–Kendall’s (modifiedmk) test in RStudio. Based on the temporal variability analysis, CV results depict that annual and summer areal rainfall had low variability with values of 13.43% and 13.7%, respectively. Winter and spring areal rainfall shows high variation with a CV value of 50.5% and 36%, respectively. According to the SAI output, around 70% of the considered year was in the normal condition of wetness. On the other hand, the seasonal (winter, spring, and summer) rainfall distribution of the study area shows strong irregularity distribution throughout the considered years as a result of PCI with a value of 57.5%. The trend of the areal rainfall was shown to be both increasing and decreasing. However, the trend was insignificant with a 10% confidence level.