Spatial estimation of future temperature changes over Africa
type: CreativeWork
description: Climate has been changing since time immemorial. However, these long-term changes are very important because of some of the consequences to mankind. Because the changes are small ones in relation to daily experiences, many people find it difficult to perceive and accept these changes. This might cause doubts in the minds of many people in the proclaimed global warming which now occupies numerous agenda of institutions and organisations concerned with the future planning and management of our planet. The first chapters of this thesis review the theories of climate change and attempts to determine temperature change predictions specifically for Africa. This study neither proclaims nor disclaims this notion of global warming. Instead, it restricts itself to estimating the spatio-temporal patterns of temperature changes for Africa from an observational perspective. Analysis of recognised records of annual surface air temperature for numerous weather stations in Africa were obtained and used to derive models of the station temperature changes over the past four decades. These models were used to predict temperature changes up to the year 2000. The individual station predictions were used to derive spatial estimates of temperature change using the IDRISI - Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provided by the Clarke University through the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP): Global Change Database Project (GCDP): Pilot Project for Africa. The spatial extent of temperature changes was derived using Theissen polygon approximation. The derived models of climatic temperature change for various stations indicated that 58% of the African main land will not experience temperature change greater than half of a degree(-0.45° to 0.45°C) by the year 2000. There was an even spread (52% and 48%) of the stations showing decreasing and increasing temperature trends, respectively. However, 30% of all the stations showed large increasing (0.46° to 2.45°C) temperatures, while f…
abstract: Climate has been changing since time immemorial. However, these long-term changes are very important because of some of the consequences to mankind. Because the changes are small ones in relation to daily experiences, many people find it difficult to perceive and accept these changes. This might cause doubts in the minds of many people in the proclaimed global warming which now occupies numerous agenda of institutions and organisations concerned with the future planning and management of our planet. The first chapters of this thesis review the theories of climate change and attempts to determine temperature change predictions specifically for Africa. This study neither proclaims nor disclaims this notion of global warming. Instead, it restricts itself to estimating the spatio-temporal patterns of temperature changes for Africa from an observational perspective. Analysis of recognised records of annual surface air temperature for numerous weather stations in Africa were obtained and used to derive models of the station temperature changes over the past four decades. These models were used to predict temperature changes up to the year 2000. The individual station predictions were used to derive spatial estimates of temperature change using the IDRISI - Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provided by the Clarke University through the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP): Global Change Database Project (GCDP): Pilot Project for Africa. The spatial extent of temperature changes was derived using Theissen polygon approximation. The derived models of climatic temperature change for various stations indicated that 58% of the African main land will not experience temperature change greater than half of a degree(-0.45° to 0.45°C) by the year 2000. There was an even spread (52% and 48%) of the stations showing decreasing and increasing temperature trends, respectively. However, 30% of all the stations showed large increasing (0.46° to 2.45°C) temperatures, while f…
author: Mkhonza, Wiseman Sinothi.
keywords: Climatic changes--Africa
license: https://devspace.unizulu.ac.za/bitstreams/32b5428b-1ada-4b59-86c0-ffcb1240a96d/download
date published: 1995
date modified: 2026-07-24T06:17:25Z
provider: University of Zululand
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Zululand