Climate Change and the Unpredictability of Nigeria’s Seasons

Climate change is no longer one of those scientific analyses we watch on TV that we understand little or nothing about, regardless of how serious the reporter seems. And that's because, unlike in the past, where they mostly talked about it and the expected change without us seeing anything different, today we live in the reality of what they've long warned and talked about to us on the news, which we often think is boring and tend to change channels during such analysis. In my country, Nigeria, for example, we've two weather seasons, which are the rainy and dry seasons, and in the past it was very easy to predict when each would occur; however, nowadays it's unpredictable.

Like I said above, in Nigeria, there are two seasons, the rainy season and the dry season. When it comes to the rainy season, it's always around April and October, while the dry season often spans from November to March. This was quite normal and expected in the past for rain to fall during the rainy season; alongside that, we also tend to have high humidity and cool temperatures. It's one of my favorite seasons, and the reason for that is because I don't like heat and sweating, and when we talk about the opposite season, which is the dry season, we know it often comes with that, but then the dry season also has its good side, not just for the crops but also for our electricity, powering my solar system fully unlike how it barely does during the rainy season.

Talking about climate change, it's quite obvious in the past few years. Take, for example, last year: rainfall throughout every single month. In fact, at some point it was quite difficult to tell which season we were in because you could have heavy rain constantly during a month that's supposed to be the dry season. And then when it's supposed to be the rainy season, you'll see the sun shining at its best as though we're in the dry season. These anomalies happening have made it quite difficult to tell what season we're in, and people and farmers just do things with the hope that everything will turn out well.

Another example is how harmattan we often experience during the dry season around December barely shows up again; for example, throughout last year we didn't experience harmattan at all. It was until late January that we saw it for just two or three days. It's quite strange, and many haven't been able to know why all these are happening. Is it due to the rapid rate of urbanization that leads to lots of deforestation and the like, or is it just normal? I really don't know, but then we hope climate change doesn't go beyond what we can cope with.

All photos are mine.