Spatiotemporal evidence of recent climate variability in Ghana

Climate change continues to be a global concern with impacts varying from region to region. Studies and observations establishing the evidence of climate change have often focused on global, regional, and national levels to the neglect of agro-ecological differences at local scale. Using trajectory and time series analysis of temperature anomalies and rainfall distributions for the agro-ecological zones of Ghana, this paper establishes a strong evidence of local climate change across the country in diverse agro-ecological zones. The evidence is based on the spatiotemporal analysis of the varying temperature and rainfall data observed from 1981 to 2009. The analysis shows local increases in temperatures for the period ranging from 0.5 to 1.0 °C with varying inter-annual rainfall distributions. The results explained the spatial differences in the agro-ecological zones in Ghana as a result of climate variability. The study provides supporting evidence for climate change using locally observed in-country data to compliment studies at global, regional, and national levels.