Trends in Daily Temperature and Precipitation Extremes over Dire-Dawa, 1980-2018

Abstract

Extreme climate events have profound impacts on economies and livelihoods of many regions of the world. In Ethiopia, for example the major floods such as in Dire-dawa and Omo basin of June 2006 illustrates the risks to ecosystems, human health and welfare, and infrastructure from short duration weather extremes. There is a paucity of information on trends in climate extremes in the country. However, a joint World Meteorological Commission for Climatology/World Climate Research Programme (WCPRP) project on climate Variability and Predictability (WMO CCl/CLIVAR) Expert Team (ET) on Climate Change Detection, Monitoring and Indices have defined 27 core climate indices mainly focusing on extreme events which can be derived through the use of RClim-Dex Software. In this study, therefore, the RClim-Dex software has been used to derive climate extreme indices for Dire-Dawa station in the Eastern Ethiopia region based on climate data for the period 1980 to 2018. The objective was to examine changes in climate extremes over the city for water provision and urban planning such as flood management practice. These indices have shown insignificant decreasing trends in annual rainfall, Consecutive maximum 5 days precipitation and R95p, R95p% precipitation. A Significant warming pattern was evident in both the maximum and minimum temperature indices. In general the results of this study are in a general agreement with what we have been observed with people’s perception about extreme weather events in the last 39 years.

Keywords: RClimDex, Climate Change, extremes Weather, trends and people perception

DOI: 10.7176/JEES/11-9-03

Publication date:September 30^th 2021