Trends and Variations of Monthly Solar Radiation, Temperature and Rainfall Data over Birnin Kebbi Metropolis for the Period of 2014-2016

Abstract

The investigation of rainfall, temperature and solar radiation variability at Birnin Kebbi metropolis, Kebbi State, Nigeria was carried out using observations of air temperature (°C) rainfall (mm) and solar radiation (W/m2) for the period of 2014 -2016 (3 years), data was obtained at Sir Ahmadu Bello international Airport, analysis of data indicate for the occurrences of abrupt change in temperature, rainfall and solar radiation values. It was observed from the distributions of monthly average wind speed for the (3) three years are fairly similar with maximum wind speed with variation in some months, having deficit values in February and April 2014, February and March 2015, January and February 2016, its revealed that, the least global solar radiation in 2014 followed by the month of January 2015 and June in 2016. The variation between maximum solar radiation and minimum is said to be great in the months of January to March where there is increase in the intensity of heat as there is strong expectation of precipitation events that become extremely in the month of August/September 2016. The slight difference between maximum and minimum in the period advocates a different seasonal period between the regime of large difference and low difference in the Relative Humidity in the year. However 2016 show the maximum temperature which in turn when compared with 2014 and 2015 as the case reverse, significant increases in precipitation indicated in 2014 compare to other years (2015, 2016). It was concluded that there is a significant downward trend in the yearly total and mean rainfalls at Birnin Kebbi showing that 2014 has highest rainfall compared with 2015 and 2016.