Trend analysis of rainfall from 1981-2022 over Zambia

Abstract

There is insufficient paucity of information on trends in long-term monthly and decadal rainfall in Zambia. This study assessed the monthly and decadal trends in rainfall over the agro-ecological regions (AERs) and Zambia from 1981 to 2022. The Mann-Kendall test statistic was used at 5 % significant level to compute trends in rainfall at monthly and decadal time step on CHIRPS v2 at 0.05° resolution. R/RStudio Sen's slope estimator was used to give the magnitude of the observed trends. The monthly rainfall time series trend over Zambia ranges from −0.04 to 0.03. The decadal trend analysis of rainfall at annual and monthly time step exhibits a decreasing/increasing trend with Sen's slope between −49.27 and 71.26 mm. Decadal trend at annual time step in AERIII, AERIIa, AERIIa and AERI exhibits a Sen's slope of −44.11 to 62.48 mm, −15.29 to 41.58 mm, −6.08 and 71.26 mm, and 2.20–64.86 mm, respectively. The decadal trend at monthly time step in AERIII, AERIIa, AERIIa and AERI exhibits a Sen's slope of −132.08 to −3.15 mm, −123.39 to −8.57 mm, −73.08 to −15.17 mm, and −80.02 to −5.21 mm, respectively. Decrease in rainfall is expected to affect agriculture, energy, water resources, sanitation and socio-economic aspects. Rainfall pattern shows spatio-temporal variability over Zambia. The results provide valuable input into the National Adaptation Plan and also useful for strategic planning purposes in water resources management under a changing climate. It is evident that spatio-temporal time steps utilized in this study provides new insights of rainfall trends at seasonal, monthly, and annual and decadal time steps.