Oscillatory behavior of monsoon rainfall over Sri Lanka during the late 19th and 20th centuries and its relationships to SSTs in the Indian Ocean and ENSO

Malmgren, Björn A.; Hullugalla, R.; Lindeberg, Greger; Inoue, Yoshio; Hayashi, Yoshihiko; Mikami, Taisei

doi:10.1007/s00704-006-0225-9

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…These studies (and several others) point to a strong relationship with ENSO that varies seasonally. Relationships of Sri Lankan rainfall to Indian Ocean SST have been reported by Suppiah (1988), Zubair et al (2003), and, on interannual to decadal time scales, Suppiah and Yoshino (1984) and Malmgren et al (2007).…”

Section: The Study Areamentioning

confidence: 75%

Finescale Evaluation of Drought in a Tropical Setting: Case Study in Sri Lanka

Lyon¹,

Zubair²,

Ralapanawe³

et al. 2009

Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

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In regions of climatic heterogeneity, finescale assessment of drought risk is needed for policy making and drought management, mitigation, and adaptation. The relationship between drought relief payments (a proxy for drought risk) and meteorological drought indicators is examined through a retrospective analysis for Sri Lanka (1960Lanka ( -2000 based on records of district-level drought relief payments and a dense network of 284 rainfall stations. The standardized precipitation index and a percent-of-annual-average index for rainfall accumulated over 3, 6, 9, and 12 months were used, gridded to a spatial resolution of 10 km. An encouraging correspondence was identified between the spatial distribution of meteorological drought occurrence and historical drought relief payments at the district scale. Time series of drought indices averaged roughly over the four main climatic zones of Sri Lanka showed statistically significant (p , 0.01) relationships with the occurrence of drought relief. The 9-month cumulative drought index provided the strongest relationships overall, although 6-and 12-month indicators provided generally similar results. Some cases of appreciable drought without corresponding relief payments could be attributed to fiscal pressures, as during the 1970s. Statistically significant relationships between drought indicators and relief payments point to the potential utility of meteorological drought assessments for disaster risk management. In addition, the study provides an empirical approach to testing which meteorological drought indicators bear a statistically significant relationship to drought relief across a wide range of tropical climates.

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Section: The Study Areamentioning

confidence: 75%

Finescale Evaluation of Drought in a Tropical Setting: Case Study in Sri Lanka

Lyon¹,

Zubair²,

Ralapanawe³

et al. 2009

Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

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“…This study also reported that the rainfall has declined significantly in few stations in the hill country. The links between climate variability and agricultural productivity, and the modulation of the rainfall over Sri Lanka by large scale oscillations such as Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) have also been documented elsewhere (Panabokke and Walgama 1974;Yoshino and Suppiah 1983;Zubair 2002;Zubair et al 2003;Malmgren et al 2007;Jayawardene et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Century scale climate change in the central highlands of Sri Lanka

Silva

Sonnadara

2016

J Earth Syst Sci

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In this study, an analysis of century scale climate trends in the central highlands of Sri Lanka is presented. Monthly rainfall and temperature records of the period 1869-2006 from five climatological stations were analyzed. The trend is calculated by the least square regression analysis and the significance of the observed trend is estimated using the Mann-Kendall statistic. The results clearly show that there is a statistically significant decrease in annual rainfall in the western slopes of the central highlands. Throughout the last century, the annual reduction of rainfall in Nuwara Eliya which is at an altitude of 1895 m was 5.2 mm/year. The decrease is largely due to the reduction in southwest monsoon rainfall which contributes to 75% of the total reduction. No significant change was observed on the eastern side of the central highlands which receives rainfall predominantly from the northeast monsoons. The mean annual temperature in the mountainous region shows a uniform increasing trend which is in line with the 100-year global temperature increase of 0.8 ± 0.2 • C. Kandy, which is at an altitude of 477 m and closely linked with the rainfall climatology of Nuwara Eliya, showed no significant change in the mean annual temperature. If the current trend continues, in another 100 years, western and eastern slopes of central highlands will receive the same amount of rainfall from the southwest monsoon and the northeast monsoon which will have far reaching consequences for Sri Lanka's economy and the ecology of the hill country.

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“…Another investigation of temporal variability of the precipitation over Sri Lanka using a maximum entropy spectral analysis was carried out by Domroes (1996). An oscillatory behaviour of the monsoon rainfall over Sri Lanka and its relationships to SSTs in the Indian Ocean and ENSO was carried out recently by Malmgren et al (2007). However, complementary studies are not yet available in the literature to compare and strengthen the findings of the earlier investigations.…”

Section: March 2015mentioning

confidence: 99%

Interannual variability of precipitation in Sri Lanka

Jayawardene¹,

Jayewardene²,

Sonnadara³

2015

J. Natn. Sci. Foundation Sri Lanka

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Abstract:Two different spectral analysis methods, the multitaper method (MTM) and the maximum entropy method (MEM) were applied to investigate the presence of low-frequency periodicities in precipitation records of 14 climatological stations in Sri Lanka. The spectral analysis revealed statistically significant periodicities in the range of 2 -3 year and 3 -6 year periods in all parts of Sri Lanka irrespective of the climatic variability. The 2 -3 year band corresponds to the Quasi-Biennial oscillation (QBO), while the 3 -6 year band corresponds to the El-Nino/Southern oscillation (ENSO) higher and lower frequency bands. Cross spectrum analysis showed statistically significant (at 5 %) coherencies for the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) and Southern oscillation index (SOI) in the 2 -3 year band and the 3 -6 year band, respectively for most of the regions. Thus, it is concluded that the IOD and SOI play important roles as modulators of precipitation in Sri Lanka.

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Oscillatory behavior of monsoon rainfall over Sri Lanka during the late 19th and 20th centuries and its relationships to SSTs in the Indian Ocean and ENSO

Cited by 9 publications

References 22 publications

Finescale Evaluation of Drought in a Tropical Setting: Case Study in Sri Lanka

Finescale Evaluation of Drought in a Tropical Setting: Case Study in Sri Lanka

Century scale climate change in the central highlands of Sri Lanka

Interannual variability of precipitation in Sri Lanka

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