Dominant east-west pattern of diurnal temperature range observed across Zambia

Abstract Diurnal temperature range (DTR) is an important index for climate because of its statistical relationships to greenhouse gases, urban heat, cloud cover, land use change, and aerosol haze layers. This study examines DTR trends across Zambia for the period 1930–2016 using the latest version of high-resolution monthly data (CRU TS v4.01) from the Climatic Research Unit. Non-parametric trend analyses were extensively employed at different spatial and temporal scales to quantify DTR changes. Taken together, results show a dominant east-west pattern with higher DTR values being observed in the western half of the country. Although there are noticeable differences in the magnitude from one month to the other, this east-west pattern is persistent throughout all the months. It is also found that mean annual DTR is negatively correlated with mean annual cloud cover with a strong and statistically significant coefficient of -0.8 but its correlation with precipitation weakens to -0.5 at the α 0.05. Results from the Mann-Kendall trend test shows marginal increments in DTR during all the seasons and they are all statistically significant at the α 0.05. The observed increments can be attributed to a general decrease in cloud cover over Zambia.