Trend Analysis of Droughts during Crop Growing Seasons of Nigeria

Mohammed Sanusi Shiru, Shamsuddin Shahid, Noraliani Alias and Eun-Sung Chung
Additional contact information
Mohammed Sanusi Shiru: Department of Hydraulics and Hydrology, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia
Shamsuddin Shahid: Department of Hydraulics and Hydrology, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia
Noraliani Alias: Department of Hydraulics and Hydrology, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia
Eun-Sung Chung: Department of Civil Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul 01811, Korea

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 3, 1-13

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.

Keywords: climate change; standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index; extent of drought; severity of drought (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/3/871/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/3/871/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:3:p:871-:d:136972

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().