ATMOSPHERIC VAPOUR PRESSURE FORECAST OVER NIGERIA USING SPECTRAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

Spectral Analysis methods are now used in meteorological studies of Atmospheric Vapour Pressure. This work considers the application of Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA),Maximum Entropy Method (MEM) and Multi- Taper Method(MTM) to model hourly computed vapour pressure from relative humidity and air temperature taken over twenty stations in Nigeria from 2000 to 2015. The work set out to identify vapour pressures, fit a suitable model to the data and make forecasts of future values. Hourly Vapour pressure rates for the period of 15 years were obtained hourly form twenty stations in Nigeria. Based on the analysis, it was found that using SSA, MEM and MTM gives more information about the underlying series. SSA was more sensitive to the differences in length, whereas the other two methods confounded length and amplitude of the series. Among these two methods, MTM provided more sensitive direction (i.e detecting lower amplitude signals), whereas MEM gave better frequency specification.