Abstract

Rainfall affects man in all spheres of his life, especially in a one city state like Rivers State. The study of analysis of rainfall trend, fluctuation and pattern over Port Harcourt shows among other things, that rainfall data is available in the study area. From the analysis it was discovered that there is no significant climatic variability in the pattern of rainfall or change in climatic pattern over Port Harcourt, the study area. The general RF condition has not change over the years. The rainfall pattern shows double Maxima with an August break or dry spell in between the two peak months of July and September. The harmattan dry season starts from late November to late February, this situation has not changed. Finally, it was also discovered that there is hardly any month without rainfall. However, the study further shows that the trend in rainfall is negative (Decreases over the years) a gradual decrease over the years in the study area implies that the amount of rainfall and the intensity is decreasing. However, this has not change the pattern or characteristics of rainfall. The fluctuation shows that the intensity of rainfall and amount is decreasing over the years. Finally a projection into 10 years shows a very gradual decrease in rainfall. It was also discovered that variability are high during the dry months than the wet months. The five lowest RF variability months accounted for 63.85% of the entire RF over Port Harcourt during the study period. Whereas, the five high RF variability months accounted for just 15.84% of the total RF over Port Harcourt for the 84 years of study.

Keywords

climate, rainfall characteristics, rainfall variability, trend, weather