WP03/22
Jel Classification
C12, C13, C22
N° Pages
36
Trends in Temperatures in Sub-Saharan Africa. Is There Climate Warming?
Abstract

Climate warming has become a serious environmental matter of global concern. The climate will define the future. Based on the current situation and future projections, the globe is heading towards possible disaster. Sub-Saharan Africa, as reported consistently by IPCC and other international bodies is amongst the worst hit regions of the world by climatic or global warming. This paper attempts to verify if there is climatic warming in Sub-Saharan Africa with the help of monthly data from January 1901 to December 2020 on the mean temperatures of 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. To do this, we employ fractional integration to account for the data's probable long memory feature. However, because other statistical features such as linear trends and seasonality might also be present in the data, we propose a broad framework that treats these three characteristics
(long-range dependence, time trends, and seasonality) in a unified treatment. We use both original data and anomalies, and our results are more conclusive when the anomalies are employed. We first note that long memory is an observed feature in the data and using the original data, the time trends are found to be significant in Southern and Eastern countries, with higher coefficients being observed when the post-War II data are employed. When looking at the anomalies, long memory is found in all cases, and a higher number of trends are detected. Thus, 41 countries show significant time trends, with the values being higher again in the post WW2 sample, suggesting that industrialization in Africa might have contributed to climate warming. The results also indicate some degree of heterogeneity across the African countries.

Keywords
Climate change; time trends; long memory; temperatures; Sub-Saharan Africa