Analysis of climate variability, trends, and prediction in the most active parts of the Lake Chad basin, Africa

An understanding of climate variability, trends, and prediction for better water resource management and planning in a basin is very important. Since the water resources of the Lake Chad basin (LCB) are highly vulnerable to changing climate, in the present study, a combination of trend analysis methods was used to examine the climate variability and trends for the period of 1951–2015 using observed and Climate Research Unit (CRU) data, and a combination of spectral analysis techniques was used for the prediction of temperature and precipitation using CRU data. Eighty-four percent of the temperature time series indicated extremely strong signals of increasing trends (α = 0.001) and 25–38% of the precipitation time series indicated strong decreasing trends (α = 0.05). Temperature is expected to increase and precipitation is expected to decrease in the future. However, surprisingly, in some regions located in the South, the temperature was predicted to decrease slightly in 2021–2030 relative to 2006–2015. This decrease might occur because these regions are highly protected natural resource areas and forests are frequently present. On the whole, the temperature was predicted to increase by 0.65–1.6 °C and precipitation was predicted to decrease by 13–11% in the next two decades (i.e., 2016–2025 and 2026–2035) relative to 1961–1990. Periodic analysis showed a 20- to 25-year cycle in precipitation in all basins and a 40- to 45-year cycle in temperature but only in the Chari-Logone basin.