Abstract

Water resource is one of the important parts of environment which plays a very significant role in balancing the ecosystem. However, the resource is threatened by many factors among which are climate elements. It is against this background; this study examines the effect of climate on surface water resources. Climatic data such as rainfall, minimum and maximum temperature, relative humidity, sunshine hours and surface water bodies were the data used in the study. All the climatic data were collected from Meteorological station of Yola international airport while area of surface water bodies was calculated from land sat 8 OLI images. Results of the rainfall trend revealed a negative value of -5.2046 at probability level of p=0.07 while relative humidity showed a significant positive trend of 0.1925 at p=0.000. Maximum and Minimum temperature also showed a similar pattern of increase in which the two variables showed a positive trend of 0.0266 and 0.0536 for maximum and minimum temperature at p<0.01 respectively. Result on the total area cover by open water bodies revealed that surface water body in the study area is decreasing which suggested that there are factors influencing the decrease in the water bodies. Result on the relationship between surface water bodies and mean annual rainfall revealed a strong positive correlation of 0.850 at p=0.068 while relationship between maximum temperature and surface water displayed an inverse relationship of -0.412. Relationship between surface water and sunshine hours also displayed a strong negative relationship of -0.717 which clearly implies that increase in sunshine hours leads to decrease in the level of surface water bodies and decrease in sunshine hours leads to increase surface water bodies. In regards to this, it was concluded that mean annual rainfall in the area is decreasing while maximum and Minimum temperature is increasing. It was also concluded that the level of surface water in the area is decreasing and increase in mean annual rainfall will lead to an increase in the surface water bodies while increase in minimum and maximum temperature will lead to a decrease in surface water bodies. In the same vein, increase in sunshine hours will lead to decrease in surface water bodies.  This therefore showed that, climate affect surface water bodies at different level and scale. As such, there is a need for climate change awareness at both local and national level to help control the consequent effects of climate change on environmental resource.

Key Word: Climate, Surface water, Quantity and Yola North