Understanding climate variability and change: analysis of temperature and rainfall across agroecological zones in Ghana

Abstract

In an agrarian economy like Ghana, the need to understand climate change is as paramount as finding solutions to address the challenges of climate change. While a large body of literature has focused on exploring the impact of climate change, very few studies in Ghana have attempted to expand our knowledge on the extent of climate change across ecological zones in Ghana. This study used Ghana Meteorological Agency's climate data from 1989 to 2015, to assess the characteristics and trends of rainfall and temperature across the six ecological zones in Ghana. With the aid of descriptive statistics, Mann-Kendall test, linear regression, analysis of variance and post-hoc comparison using Tukey HSD test, the study found increasing trend of temperature and decreasing rainfall across ecological zones and provided policy recommendations essential to offset the adverse impact of climate change particularly on agriculture.