Climate and Human Comfort in Abuja, Nigeria

Abstract

The influence of climatic factors on the physiological human comfort in Abuja was studied using two sources of data (primary and secondary). Daily, monthly and annual data on climatic variables were collected from the study area as well as data on population for a period of ten years (1994-2003). The comfort index was calculated using Thorn's (1959) discomfort index, while Pearson product moment correlation analysis was used to test the relationship between mean values of temperature/relative humidity and population/economic activities. Simple percentage scores were also employed to assess the perception of the people in respect to physiological comfort in the study area. The result obtained show that Abuja's physiological comfort index stood at 24.2°C. The result of the analysis between climatic variables and population shows a strong positive relationship significant at the 1% confidence level. About 70% of the population variation in Abuja was explained by micro climatic factors. 68.4% of the respondents however agreed that the established comfort index does not affect their occupation.