Quantifying the impact of global warming on precipitation patterns in India

Abstract

The past few decades have witnessed a change in precipitation patterns around the world. This change includes an increase in heavy precipitation and a decrease in light and moderate precipitation. Global/regional warming has been attributed as one of the major factors causing the observed change in precipitation patterns. Past studies over the Indian region have not focused much on quantification of the impact of warming on changes in precipitation patterns. The present research quantifies the impact of warming on precipitation patterns over the Indian region. For this purpose, rain gauge‐based high‐resolution gridded precipitation data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for 113 years between 1901 and 2013 are used to link the changes in precipitation patterns over India during the South West (SW) monsoon season with warming using a new method that focuses on inter‐annual differences rather than time series. It has been reported that during the SW monsoon period, there is an increase of about 51.85% ± 19% in the top 10% precipitation for each degree (K) increase in temperature. Decreases of about 15–30%/K in low and moderate precipitation have also been reported per 1 K increase in temperature. The impact of warming is more severe over Western and North Eastern India and during July and August. An increase in heavy rainy days of about 46.53% ± 14% per 1 K increase in temperature has been reported over the Indian region. Low and moderate rainy days show a decrease of about 24.67% ± 9.53% for a unit degree increase in temperature. Results reported in this research point out increasing trends in droughts and floods due to increased heavy precipitation and decreased low and moderate precipitation in a warming environment.

Observed Changes of Rain-Season Precipitation in China from 1960 to 2018

“…These results were in agreement with the previous finding about an decrease in annual precipitation over China [31]. In other regions of the world, similar results were also found in the Mediterranean, India, Turkey, and East Africa [54][55][56][57]. However, Song, Achberger and Linderholm [41] found that the total amount of rain-season precipitation showed an increasing trend in China from 1961 to 2008.…”

Variability of integrated precipitable water over India in a warming climate

“…Atmospheric water vapour plays a critical role in governing precipitation patterns (Trenberth et al, 2003;Mishra and Liu, 2014;Mishra, 2019). Mishra and Liu (2014) reported an increase in heavy precipitation and a reduction in light and moderate precipitation as a result of increased atmospheric water in a warming environment.…”

The Anomalous Weather Parameters that Lead to the Extreme Rainfall of Kerala in August 2018

“…A rise of 1.5°C in global mean temperature from the preindustrial era can increase the three hourly precipitation maxima by 20% (Ali and Mishra 2018). Mishra (2019) also attributes the heavy precipitation events to global warming, speci cally to increased extreme precipitation and a decrease in moderate and light precipitation. This study shows that for a 1.0°C increase in regional warming, about 4.98% ± 1.26% increase can occur in the precipitable water vapour content.…”