A statistical study for the Sudan rainfall

Dissertant

Ali, Hatim Musa Mahmud

Thesis advisor

Bashshar, Kamal al-Din al-Sadiq

University

Omdurman Islamic University

Faculty

Unesco Chair in Water Resources

University Country

Sudan

Degree

Master

Degree Date

2008

English Abstract

Over the years, the question of water is becoming more complicated.

The gap between water demand in terms of quality and quantity and water supply is getting wider and wider.

Water has a special role in arid and semi-arid regions like Sudan.

Rainfall which provides much of the available surface water and supports most of the country agricultural activities varies significantly from the northern regions to southern regions of the country.

This research evaluate quantitatively the rainfall volumes at a number of rain gauges stations and test the time series to infer information about the average onset, cessation, duration of the rainy season, year to year rainfall variation using standard deviation and coefficient of variation, the total annual rainfall and then test the trends of the annual rainfall amounts in the country.

The results reveals that the spatial distribution of mean annual rainfall in Sudan tends to increase from north to the south, where registered the highest amount of rainfall, 1079mm with 192 standard deviation and 0.2 coefficient of variation in Wau.

The lowest amount of rainfall was registered in the extreme northeast 21mm with 143 standard deviation and 0.3 coefficient of variation in Halaib.

Longer and earlier rainy season was experienced in the south, onset in March (21-31) and cessation in November (1-11) with duration of 220 days in Juba, while shorter and later rainy season was experienced in the north, onset in October (21-31) and cessation in November (21-30) with duration of 40 days in Arbaat.

The statistic linear trend picture of the rainfall over the country does not give clear vision.

Fourteen rain gauge stations distributed randomly over the country shows significant declining trend out of thirty while the rest shows insignificant trend.

The split sampling test revealed that the mean value of the rainfall changed significantly twice, The first change was in 1971 where the mean dropped while the second change was in 1984 when the mean rise but it does not reach the per 1971 value.

The dissertation gives reliable and useful results for the agricultural planners to choose suitable regions for the agriculture in the country and to choose suitable Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) techniques.

Main Subjects

Earth Sciences, Water and Environment

Topics

• Statistics
• Sudan

No. of Pages

94

Table of Contents

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

Language

English

Data Type

Arab Theses

Record ID

BIM-362739