Stochastic Characteristics and Modelling of Monthly Rainfall Time Series of Ilorin, Nigeria.

Abstract

The analysis of time series is essential for building mathematical models to generate synthetic hydrologic records, to forecast hydrologic events, to detect intrinsic stochastic characteristics of hydrologic variables as well to fill missing and extend records. To this end, this paper examined the stochastic characteristics of the monthly rainfall series of Ilorin, Nigeria vis-à-vis modelling of same using four modelling schemes. The Decomposition, Square root transformation-deseasonali- sation, Composite, and Periodic Autoregressive (T-F) modelling schemes were adopted. Results of basic analysis of the stochastic characteristics revealed that the monthly series does not show any discernible presence of long-term trend, though there is a seeming inter-decadal annual variation. The series exhibits strong seasonality throughout its length, both in the moments and autocorre- lation and significantly intermittent. Based on assessment of the respective models, the performance of the different modelling schemes can be expressed in this order: T-F > Composite > Square root transformation-Deseasonalised > Decomposition. Considering the results obtained, modelling of monthly rainfall series in the presence of serial correlation between months should be based on the establishment of conditional probability framework. On the other hand, in view of the inadequacy of these modelling schemes, because of the autoregressive model components in the coupling protocol, nonlinear deterministic methods such as Artificial Neural Network, Wavelet models could be viable complements to the linear stochastic framework.