Study Of The Variation In Weather Parameters In Some Selected Cities In Southern Nigeria

Abstract

In this study, statistically investigation on the weather parameters of some selected cities in Port-Harcourt, Calabar, Owerri, Awka, Asaba, Benin and Enugu – all in southern Nigeria was carried out. These parameters include temperature (wet and dry bulb), relative humidity, dew point and pressure in different months of the year using Nigerian Meteorological Agency data. Using the monthly mean average, our results show that air pressures at Enugu Pa  and Owerri ( Pa) are fairly consistently higher than air pressure at Asaba ( ) Benin ( Pa), Port-Harcourt ( ) and Calabar ( Pa). Owerri station also showed the highest variance with . A detail study of the average values of temperatures (both dry and wet bulb) indicates that all the stations statistically have the same yearly average temperature. The average values obtained from humidity data indicates that Port-Harcourt and Calabar are highly humid while Enugu has the lowest humidity. The dew point temperature averages the same for all the stations. The results we obtained also indicate that air pressure does not correlate with other weather parameters especially from the daily data and the weighted weekly averages. One would have expected air pressure to vary with relative humidity, since air density is expected to increase with high humidity, though the weighted monthly average showed some dependence on relative humidity – air pressure correlation for most of the stations: Port-Harcourt , Calabar , Benin , Asaba  and Enugu . Other weather parameters – temperature (dry and wet bulb), relative humidity and dew point correlation coefficients showed that there is a strong positive correlation between these parameters for all the stations, which is weakest between dry bulb temperature and relative humidity. The perfect correlation between wet bulb temperature, dew point and relative humidity is expected. For a given dew point and its corresponding absolute humidity, the relative humidity will change inversely, albeit nonlinearly, with the temperature. This is because the partial pressure of water increases with temperature.