Associating farmers' perception of climate change and variability with historical climate data

Abstract

The farmers' perceptions of climate change (CC) and variability in Okpuje were assessed and compared with historical climate data. They perceive an occurrence of change that affects their farm activities, but lack the scientific understanding of this change. While some do not know what causes the change, others attribute it to God's vengeance. The perceptions of rising temperature and delay in the onset of the rainy season are corroborated by the analysis of the climate data. The temperature is significantly rising and it increased at the rate of 0.14° C per decade between 1960 and 2019. The rainfall decreased at the rate of 8.5 mm per decade. The rainy season tends toward late-onset and early cessation dates. However, the perception of increasing rainfall in the area was not upheld by the trend analysis of the rainfall data. The difference might be due to high variability in rainfall in space and time. The high rainfall recorded lately might have posed difficulty for the human memory as closer events are remembered easier than distant events and hence can be unravelled via a scientific approach. Nevertheless, since perception shapes adaptation, the people's indigenous perceptions and experiences should form part of intervention measures and policies for CC adaptation to command greater participation and wider acceptance. Thus, farmers' perceptions provide vital information but would be more reliable if integrated with scientific data analysis for policy and decision-makers in CC science, implying that none of them should be relegated but integrated.

Keywords

• climate change and variability
• rainfall
• temperature
• perception
• nigeria