Analysis of the trends of climatic variables in southeast Nigeria

The study was conducted in Southeast Nigeria which is located in the rainforest zone of Nigeria and made up of five states Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo state out of the 36 (Thirty Six) states in Nigeria. It analyzed the trends of climatic variables in Southeast Nigeria. The time series data on means of annual temperature and rainfall for a period of 42 years (1972-2014) in southeast Nigeria were collected from the Nigeria meteorological agency (NIMET) within the zone. Data collected were analyzed with trend analysis using Ms, Excel, Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 15 and STATA. Results showed that there had been high inter-annual variability in rainfall volume over the years with insignificant correlation (0.049) between volume of rainfall and time. However, the trend of rainfall intensity over the period was significant at (p=0.01), with the correlation of (0.54) and trend coefficient (0.48). The trend of temperature within the period (1972-2014), shows an increasing trend and statistically significant at (P=0.01). The Coefficient of correlation of temperature and time was (78.7%) which indicates existence of warming in southeast Nigeria. These findings would guide farmers to take advantages of most favourable climatic condition (weather), for their farm activities, especially crops cultivation and solve the hitherto problem of unpredictability of the season amongst farmer in the region. However, the study recommends that periodical weather forecasts from meteorological agents of government should be made known to farmers.