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- Title
Dry spells and probability of rainfall occurrence for Lake Kyoga Basin in Uganda, East Africa.
- Authors
Ojara, Moses A.; Lou, Yunsheng; Aribo, Lawrence; Namumbya, Silvia; Uddin, Md. Jalal
- Abstract
The economy of Uganda depends heavily on rainfed agriculture. In this study, daily observed rainfall datasets from 9 weather stations with length varying within 1955 and 2017 were used to generate the probability of rainfall and dry spells occurrence using a Markov chain approach. The length of the maximum dry spell was obtained using the direct method based on the definition of a dry day that rainfall is less than 0.85 mm (R < 0.85 mm) and the length of a dry spell is the sum of the number of dry days in a sequence. Mann–Kendall's statistics (MK) was used to assess the trends in the length of maximum dry spells and Sen's slope test to estimate the magnitude of change (Q2) in days/per month. MK test results show increasing trends in the length of the maximum dry spells in March at 5 stations, while an insignificant decrease in the length of maximum dry spells is revealed for remaining stations. For the month of April and May, the length of a maximum dry spell is observed to be decreasing across most stations although not statistically significant at the 5% significance level during their respective study periods. The probability of 8 days dry spell is high across all the stations (38–69%) in March, April, and August. This could strongly be related to the changing climate in the region. Negative impacts due to increased length of dry spells could be mitigated through well-timed planting of crops, use of irrigation, and growing of heat-/drought-tolerant crop varieties to match the changing weather and climate patterns.
- Subjects
UGANDA; EAST Africa; RAINFALL probabilities; WATERSHEDS; WEATHER &; climate change; MAGIC; METEOROLOGICAL stations; RAINFALL intensity duration frequencies
- Publication
Natural Hazards, 2020, Vol 100, Issue 2, p493
- ISSN
0921-030X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11069-019-03822-x