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Trend analysis of droughts during crop growing seasons of Nigeria

Shiru, M. S. and Shahid, S. and Alias, N. and Chung, E. S. (2018) Trend analysis of droughts during crop growing seasons of Nigeria. Sustainability (Switzerland), 10 (3). ISSN 2071-1050

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su10030871

Abstract

This study assesses the impacts of recent climate changes on drought-affected areas and the occurrence of droughts during different cropping seasons of Nigeria using the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI). The crop growing seasons are considered because the droughts for those periods are more destructive to national agricultural production. The Mann-Kendall test and binary logistic regression were used to quantify the trends in drought-affected areas and the occurrence of crop droughts with different areal extents, respectively. Gauge-based gridded rainfall and temperature data for the period 1961-2010 with spatial resolutions of 0.5° were used. Results showed an increase in the areal extent of droughts during some of the cropping seasons. The occurrences of droughts, particularly moderate droughts with smaller areal extents, were found to increase for all of the seasons. The SPEI values calculated decreased mostly in the regions where rainfall was decreasing. That is, the recent changes in climate were responsible for the increase in the occurrences of droughts with smaller areal extents. These trends in climate indicate that the occurrence of larger areal extent droughts may happen more frequently in Nigeria in the future.

Item Type:Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:Climate change, Extent of drought, Severity of drought, Standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index
Subjects:T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Divisions:Civil Engineering
ID Code:79782
Deposited By: Fazli Masari
Deposited On:28 Jan 2019 06:52
Last Modified:28 Jan 2019 06:52

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