Climate change impact on variability of rainfall intensity in the Upper Blue Nile Basin

摘要

Due to the unprecedented increased concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) resulting from industries in developed countries, the developing countries are vulnerable to the changing climate (Linacre 2003). Often researchers define climate and weather in an interrelated way. In a general definition, climate is what is expected and weather is what we get. It is clear that the changing climate has become a huge obstacle for many countries' development, and especially for developing countries like Ethiopia. The IPCC defines climate change as the state of climate identified by changes in the mean and/or variability of its properties for long periods, whether due to natural activity or as a result of human activity. But UNFCCC defines climate change in a way different to the IPCC definition: as change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to the natural climate variability over a comparable time period. Here, the UNFCCC definition is more focused on socio-economic activities than physical changes happening in nature (IPCC 2007, Bates et al. 2008, Abdo et al. 2009). In most cases, including this study, the climate data used for climate change analysis is usually a time series of more than 30-year length.