Time Series Modelling of Rainfall in New Juaben Municipality of the Eastern Region of Ghana

Abstract

The survival of virtually every organism is heavily dependent on water, one source of which is rainfall. Due to the agriculture base of the Ghanaian economy, rainfall forecast has become paramount in the wake of changing climatic conditions due to human activities. This paper therefore seeks to develop a time series model for rainfall pattern and its prediction for the New Juaben Municipality of the Eastern region of Ghana. Rainfall monthly data on New Juaben Municipality was used by applying the Box-Jenkins approach to develop the SARIMA (0, 0, 1) (1, 1, 1)12 model, to forecast the rainfall statistics of the New Juaben Municipality for a year. From the results of the study, it was revealed that rainfall pattern for the next year will not be substantially different from the previous years despite some human and industrial activities that were believed to be affecting the pattern. It was therefore recommended that measures put in place to curb activities that seem to be detrimental to climate be continued.