Climate variability and change is the significant environmental and global threat of the current century. This study analyzed variability and time series trend analysis of climate from 1981-2018 and local people’s perception towards climate change in Janamora Woreda, Northwest Ethiopia. Primary data was collected through a household survey from 138 respondents selected by multi-stage sampling method. Secondary data was collected from local meteorological stations and downloaded from historical NASA power data access viewer. Chi-square and Mann-Kendall tests were used to test perceived and observed climatic changes and variabilities; using SPSS version 23 and XLSTAT 2016 respectively. Standardized rainfall anomaly index was used to determine the dry and wet years and the nature of trends. The results revealed a significant increasing trend in annual average temperature in local stations except for Debark and gridded temperature data. In terms of rainfall, insignificant trend but high variability was observed both at the local stations and the gridded data. About half of the study period revealed a negative rainfall anomaly. Moreover, 70 and 80% of the interviewed respondents were aware of an increase in temperature and a decrease in rainfall respectively. Similarly, the χ2 test revealed a significant variation (significant at P<0.05) the in perception of temperature and rainfall between agro-ecology, gender and education status. Therefore, it is essential to design planned climatic change adaptation and mitigation strategies to improve the adaptation capacity and resilience of rainfed dependent farmers, and further studies should be conducted in the future.

Keywords: Trend Analysis, Temperature, Precipitation, Variability, Janamora