Abstract

MODELING THE SEQUENCE OF WET AND DRY DAYS CONDITIONED ON THE OCCURRENCE OF AN EXTREME WEATHER CONDITION IN PORT HARCOURT, NIGERIA.

1AGADA, P.O., 2AGADA, I.O., 3Odia, Josphine.

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ABSTRACT Following the effect of a climatic variable by extreme weather conditions resulting from the global effect of climate change, modeling one climatic variable in isolation of other relevant variable(s) will not accurately mirror reality. It is a known fact that rainfall amount depends on the maximum amount of water vapour that the air can hold and this in turn depends on air temperature. In the light of this, this work has been able to establish that the occurrence of a wet or dry day is affected by an extreme weather condition such as maximum air temperature anomaly (positive or negative) in the city of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Consequently, the researchers modeled the sequence of wet and dry days conditioned on the occurrence of a positive and negative maximum air temperature anomaly using the markov chain methodology. Agadaet al. (2015) did not consider the effect of any extreme weather condition when they modeled the sequence of wet and dry days in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The authors of this work have been able to build in an extreme weather effect into the model of Agadaet al (2015) as the occurrence of a positive and negative maximum air temperature anomaly. This was done in order to properly mirror reality and provide meaningful information that will assist in the assessment of the weather and climate of the city. A major conclusion was that an extreme weather condition such as maximum air temperature anomaly will on the long run, reduce the chance of occurrence of a wet day and increase that of a dry day. This will in turn, prolong the average time of reoccurrence of a wet day and shorten that of a dry day across the months of the year. This according to the authors is a strong indicator for climate change in the area. Keywords:Modeling, Sequence, Extreme weather

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