Lack of uniform trends but increasing spatial variability in observed Indian rainfall extremes

Ghosh, Subimal; Das, Debasish; Kao, Shih‐Chieh; Ganguly, Auroop R.

doi:10.1038/nclimate1327

Cited by 287 publications

(229 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…They have reported that in spite of considerable year-to-year variability, there are significant increases in the frequency and the intensity of extreme monsoon rain events in central India over the past 50 years and the observed trends suggest enhanced risks associated with extreme rainfall over India in the coming decades. The findings of Ghosh et al 23,24 were similar to those of Goswami et al 19 . Lacombe and McCartney 25 found changes in rainfall pattern aligning with the geography of anthropogenic atmospheric disturbances and confirmed the paramount role of global warming in recent changes for daily gridded rainfall data .…”

Section: Studies Of Extreme Rainfall Trends In Indiasupporting

confidence: 79%

Trends in Rainfall and Peak Flows for some River Basins in India

Jain¹,

Nayak²,

Singh³

et al. 2017

Current Science

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The aim of the present study is to examine the trends in magnitude and intensity of precipitation and peak floods of different magnitudes for seven major river basins in India. Data pertaining to daily flows for about 30-odd years and precipitation for 61 years (from 1951 to 2012) were analysed. Linear trends were calculated for the number of rainy days, rainfall intensity and occurrence of flood peaks for all basins. Using the Sen's slope estimator, it was found that annual peak rainfall increases for most of the basins in India. From the Mann-Kendall test and Sen's slope, it was found that the Cauvery and Brahamani and Baitarani basins show a rising trend in the number of rainy days, but the trend was falling for five other basins. When the basins were classified as mountains and plains, it was found that the number of daily rainfall events of different magnitudes was more in the mountains compared to the plains. The rivers which flow from west to east direction have more rainy days compared to those which flow towards the west. It was observed that in general the number of rainy days was falling while the number of intense events was increasing. The number of flood peaks of smaller magnitude in different decades showed slight falling trend. It was also found that there was falling or no trend for severe floods. Anthropogenic activities (construction of storage reservoirs, diversions, urbanization, land-use change, and soil and water conservation measures, etc.) have probably affected the generation of peak floods in the rivers of India. River regulation through storage reservoirs in the past 50 years has resulted in the reduction of peak flows. Hence with the same rainfall, the flood peaks would have increased under virgin conditions. Keywords: Flood peaks, rainfall trends, river basins.PRECIPITATION is a key component of the earth's hydrologic cycle, but it is also one of the most difficult hydrometeorological variables to measure and model accurately. Precipitation at a place is determined by large-scale as well as local processes, and therefore exhibits pronounced variability in a range of spatial and temporal scales. Among the climate variables, precipitation is the most important process for the water sector. It is a variable that drives the key natural resource process in a river basin. Therefore, it is most widely analysed in climate change impact studies.Run-off from a river basin is the integrated outcome of climatic inputs and basin topography, land use/cover, and water management infrastructure. Therefore, a change in the precipitation and other relevant climatic variables, land use/land cover, and water utilization leads to a change in water yield from a catchment and its temporal distribution. It was found that river flow has strong natural variability and exhibits long-term persistence 1,2 . This behaviour can confound the results of trend and significance tests.Global warming is unequivocal and is expected to be reflected in an increase in the magnitude and frequency of extreme precipitation ev...

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Section: Studies Of Extreme Rainfall Trends In Indiasupporting

confidence: 79%

Trends in Rainfall and Peak Flows for some River Basins in India

Jain¹,

Nayak²,

Singh³

et al. 2017

Current Science

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“…While validating their 2006 study, Ghosh et al (2012) indicated increasing spatial variability in observed Indian rainfall extremes. They also found that moderate rainfall increased in central India despite a decreasing trend in occurrence of moderate rainfall.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Logit-normal mixed model for Indian monsoon precipitation

Dietz

Chatterjee

2014

Nonlin. Processes Geophys.

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Abstract.Describing the nature and variability of Indian monsoon precipitation is a topic of much debate in the current literature. We suggest the use of a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM), specifically, the logit-normal mixed model, to describe the underlying structure of this complex climatic event. Four GLMM algorithms are described and simulations are performed to vet these algorithms before applying them to the Indian precipitation data. The logit-normal model was applied to light, moderate, and extreme rainfall. Findings indicated that physical constructs were preserved by the models, and random effects were significant in many cases. We also found GLMM estimation methods were sensitive to tuning parameters and assumptions and therefore, recommend use of multiple methods in applications. This work provides a novel use of GLMM and promotes its addition to the gamut of tools for analysis in studying climate phenomena.

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“…In practice, the percentile-based method were widely used in many regions over the world because of its efficiency and simplicity (Bell et al, 2004;Wang and Zhou, 2005;Du et al, 2013). In most cases, the EP was based on the 90th (Gemmer et al, 2011), 95th (Bell et al, 2004;Zhai et al, 2005), 97.5th (Wang and Zhou, 2005) or 99th (Gemmer et al, 2011) percentiles of daily precipitation data, which represent moderate to extremely unusual events and were demonstrated to be appropriate in various regions (Alexander et al, 2006;Ghosh et al, 2012;Vittal et al, 2013). Three indicators, i.e., frequency (F), intensity (I) and extreme volume (EV), are often used to describe the characteristics and detect the trends of EP.…”

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

“…However, the functional relationships between parameters and the time need to be specified as a priori, and such information might not be available or persistent over time due to the complexity of climate system (Kao and Ganguly, 2011;Ghosh et al, 2012). Alternatively, the distributional parameters were estimated separately for a series of Y-years moving window, rather than for the entire extreme series (Kao and Ganguly, 2011;Ghosh et al, 2012;Vittal et al, 2013). A choice of 30 years of window size was recommended by Kao and Ganguly (2011) considering that it was expected to smooth out the effects of most multi-decadal climate oscillators and providing more confidence for low frequency extremes (Kharin et al, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Investigating the variation and non-stationarity in precipitation extremes based on the concept of event-based extreme precipitation

She

Shao

Xia

et al. 2015

Journal of Hydrology

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a b s t r a c tExtreme precipitations (EP) could induce a series of social, environmental and ecological problems. Traditional EP analysis usually investigated the characteristics based on a fixed time scale and therefore ignored the continuity of EP occurrence. As a result, a comprehensive assessment on the influence and consequence of the EP occurring during consecutive time periods were largely eliminated. On the other hand, the characteristics of EP, including variables such as frequency, intensity and extreme volume, were commonly defined without sufficient consideration of the local tolerance capacity (which can be represented by a threshold level of EP) and therefore would sometimes be inappropriate. In this study, we proposed a concept of event-based extreme precipitation (EEP) by considering the continuity of EP and defined the statistical variables for the characteristics of an EEP event by taking account of local tolerance capacity. An EEP was identified as a collection of precipitation data over the consecutive time period in which all the precipitation amounts are above the pre-defined threshold, and EEP events are separated by at least one time step (e.g., day or hour) with precipitation amount below the threshold. As a case study which in fact motivated our proposal, we investigated the changes and variations of EEP with the consideration of potential non-stationarity in the Hanjiang River Basin of China (HJRB) during the time period of 1960-2013. Results showed that the concept of EEP, which could reflect the impact of continuity of EP occurrence and mirror the differences of local tolerance capacity, was more appropriate than the traditional method in the EP analysis.Crown

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Lack of uniform trends but increasing spatial variability in observed Indian rainfall extremes

Cited by 287 publications

References 29 publications

Trends in Rainfall and Peak Flows for some River Basins in India

Trends in Rainfall and Peak Flows for some River Basins in India

Logit-normal mixed model for Indian monsoon precipitation

Investigating the variation and non-stationarity in precipitation extremes based on the concept of event-based extreme precipitation

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