Statistical analysis of long-term rainfall trends in Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, India
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Abstract
Rainfall is the key climatic variable that governs the regional hydrologic cycle and availability of water resources. Rainfall trend analysis in a localized watershed can improve many aspects of water resource management not only to the catchment itself but also to some of the related other catchments. The trend analysis of monthly rainfall data over Cherrapunji of Meghalaya in India for the period 1872-2007 has been carried out in this work. While the magnitude of the trend in the time series has been determined using Sen's estimator, the significance of the trend in monthly rainfall series has been tested using Mann-Kendall test. During the time span 1872-2007, an increasing trend has been found in the monthly rainfall for the months July, October and November, and a decreasing trend has been found in the monthly rainfall for the months February to June, August and September. On the other hand, it was found that none of Mann-Kendall Z values was significant at 5% level of significance. Therefore, from Mann-Kendall Z test, it can be concluded that there is no trend in any month in monthly rainfall for the station Cherrapunji. For the better assessment of the temporal variation in monthly rainfall trend, whole period was divided into two halves, 1872-1939 and 1940-2007. Then, trend magnitude through Sen's estimator and Mann-Kendall Z for test of significance were determined for these two time periods separately. The analysis of trends of monthly rainfall in these two halves showed large variability in the magnitude and direction of the trend in various months from one half to another. Accurate prediction of trends in monthly rainfall is an important aspect of climate research and we believe that present study could provide a scope to correlate between current rainfall trend and climate change scenario of the study area.
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Keywords
Cherrapunji, Mann-Kendall Test, Monthly Rainfall, Sen's Estimator, Trend Analysis
References
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Bond, N. R., Lake, P. S. and Arthington, A. H. (2008). The impacts of drought on freshwater ecosystems: an Australian perspective, Hydrobiologia, 600, 3-16.
Caloiero, T., Coscarelli, R. and Ferrari, E. (2017). Analysis of rainfall trend in southern Italy through the application of the ITA technique, Eur. Water, 59, 199–206
Caprio, J. M., Quamme, H. A. and Redmond, K. (2009). A statistical procedure to determine recent climate change of extreme meteorological data as applied to two locations in the northwestern North America, Climate Change, 92, 65-81.
Choudhury, B. U., Das, A, Ngachan, S. V. et al. (2012). Trend analysis of long term weather variables in mid-altitude Meghalaya, North-East India, J. Agric. Phys., 12, 12-22.
Das, S., Tomar, C. S., Saha, D., Shaw, S. O. and Singh, C. (2015). Trends in rainfall patterns over North-East India during 1961-2010, Int. J. Earth. Atmos. Sci., 2, 37–48.
Dash, S. K. and Hunt, J. C. R. (2007). Variability of climate change in India, Current Science, 93, 782-788.
Dash, S. K., Jenamani, R. K., Kalsi, S. R. and Panda, S. K. (2007). Some evidence of climate change in twentieth-century India, Climate Change, 85, 299-321.
Dash, S. K., Kulkarni, M. A., Mohanty, U. C. and Prasad, K. (2009). Changes in the characteristics of rain events in India, J. Geophys Res., 114, 1-12.
Datta, P and Bose, S. (2020). Assessing the changes in climate extremes over Karbi Anglong district of Assam, North-East India, Spat. Inf. Res., 28, 547–558.
DeGaetano, A. T. (1996). Recent trends in maximum and minimum temperature threshold exceedences in the northeastern United States, J. Climate, vol. 9, 1646-1657.
Gharphalia, B. J., Deka, R. L., Islam, A. N., Dutta, P. and Medhi, K.
(2018). Variability and Trends of Rainfall Events in the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam, India, Int. J. Curr. Microbiol. App. Sci., 7, 1902-1912.
Goswami, B. N., Venugopal, V., Sengupta, D., Madhusoodanan, M. S. and Xavier, P. K. (2006). Increasing trend of extreme rain events over India in a warming environment, Science, 314, 1442-1445.
Guhathakurta, P., Sreejith, O. P. and Menon, P. A. (2011). Impact of climate change on extreme rainfall events and flood risk in India, J Earth Syst Sc., 120, 359-373.
Hirsch, R., Slack, J. R. and Smith, R. A. (1982). Techniques of trend analysis for monthly water quality data, Water Resources Research, 18, 107-121.
Hennemuth, B., Bender, S., Bülow, K., Dreier, N., Keup-Thiel, E., Krüger, O., Mudersbach, C., Radermacher, C. and Schoetter, R. (2013). Statistical methods for the analysis of simulated and observed climate data, applied in projects and institutions dealing with climate change impact and adaptation, CSC Report 13, Climate Service Center, Germany.
Jain, S. K., Kumar, V. and Saharia, M. (2013). Analysis of rainfall and temperature trends in Northeast India, Int. J. Climatol, 33, 968-978.
Kumar, V., Jain, S. K. and Singh, Y. (2010). Analysis of long-term rainfall trends in India, Hydrological Sciences Journal, .55, 484–496.
Kendall, M. G. (1975). Rank correlation methods, 4th ed., Charles Griffin, London.
Lal, M. (2001). Climatic change implications for India's water Resources, Journal of Indian Water Resource Society, 21, 101–119.
Laskar, S. I., Kotal, S. D. and Bhowmik, S. K. R. (2014). Analysis of rainfall and temperature trends of selected stations over North East India during last century, Mausam, 65, 497–508.
Letcher, S. G. and Chazdon, R. L. (2009). Rapid recovery of biomass, Species Richness, and Species Composition in a Forest Chronosequence in Northeastern Costa Rica, Biotropica, 41, 608-617.
Lettenmaier, D. P., Wood, E. F. and Wallis, J. R. (1994). Hydro-climatological trends in the continental United States, 1948–88, Journal of Climate, 7, 586-607.
Machiwal, D., Gupta, A., Jha, M. K. and Kamble, T. (2019). Analysis of trend in temperature and rainfall time series of an Indian arid region: comparative evaluation of salient techniques, Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 136, 301–320.
Mahanta, R., Sarma, D. and Choudhury, A. (2013). Heavy rainfall occurrences in Northeast India, Int. J. Climatol., 33, 1456–1469.
Malik, A., Kumar, A., Guhathakurta, P. and Kisi, O. (2019). Spatial-temporal trend analysis of seasonal and annual rainfall (1966–2015) using innovative trend analysis method with significance test, Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 12, 1-23.
Mallick, J., Talukdar, S., Alsubih, M., Salam, R., Ahmed, M., Kahla, N. B. and Shamimuzzaman, M. (2020). Analyzing the trend of rainfall in Asir region of Saudi Arabia using the family of Mann-Kendall tests, innovative trend analysis, and detrended fluctuation analysis, Theoretical and Applied Climatology, doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03448-1.
Mann, H. B. (1945). Non-parametric tests against trend, Econometrica, 13, 245-259.
Marak, J. D. K., Sarma, A. K. and Bhattacharjya, R. K. (2020). Innovative trend analysis of spatial and temporal rainfall variations in Umiam and Umtru watersheds in Meghalaya, India, Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 142, 1397–1412.
Mooley, D. A. and Parthasarthy, B. (1984). Fluctuations of all India summer monsoon rainfall during 1871–1978, Climatic Change, 6, 287–301.
Murata, F., Hayashi, T., Matsumoto, J. and Asada, H. (2007). Rainfall in the Meghalaya plateau in Northeastern India-one of the rainiest places in the world, Nat Hazard, 42, 391-399.
Myhre, G., Alterskjær, K., Stjern, C. W., Hodnebrog, Ø., Marelle, L., Samset, B. H., Sillmann, J., Schaller, N., Fischer, E., Schulz, M. and Stohl, A. (2019). Frequency of extreme precipitation increases extensively with event rareness under global warming. Sci. Rep., 9, 1–10.
Nyaupane, N., Thakur, B., Kalra, A. and Ahmad, S. (2018). Evaluating future flood scenarios using CMIP5 climate projections, Water, 10, 1–18.
Panda, A and Sahu, N. (2020). Trend analysis of seasonal rainfall and temperature pattern in Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput districts of Odisha, India, Atmospheric Science Letters, DOI: 10.1002/asl.932.
Papalexiou, S. M. and Montanari, A. (2019). Global and regional increase of precipitation extremes under global warming. Water Resour. Res., 55, 4901–4914.
Partal, T. and Kahya, E. (2006). Trend analysis in Turkish precipitation data, Hydrological Processes, 20, 2011-2016.
Pradhan, R., Singh, N. and Singh, R. P. (2019). Onset of summer monsoon in Northeast India is preceded by enhanced transpiration. Sci. Rep. 9, 1–11.
Prokop, P. and Walanus, A. (2015). Variation in the orographic extreme rain events over the Meghalaya hills in Northeast India in the two halves of the twentieth century, Theor. Appl.Climatol., 121, 389-399.
Rajeevan, M., Bhate, J. and Jaswal, A. K. (2008). Analysis of variability and trends of extreme rainfall events over India using 104 years of gridded daily rainfall data, Geophys Res. Let.t, 35, L18707.
Ranade, A., Singh, N., Singh, H. N. and Sontakke, N. A. (2008). On variability of hydrological wet season, seasonal rainfall and rainwater potential of the river basins of India (1813-2006), Journal of Hydrological Research and Development, 23, 79-108.
Roy, S. and Balling, R. C. (2004). Trends in extreme daily precipitation indices in India, Int J Climatol, 24, 457-466.
Sen, P. K. (1968). Estimates of the regression coefficient based on Kendall's tau, J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 63, 1379-1389.
Trenberth, K. E., Dai, A., Rasmussen, R. M. and Parsons D. B. (2003). The changing character of precipitation, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 84, 1205-1217.
Thapliyal, V. and Kulshrestha, S. M. (1991). Decadal changes and trends over India, Mausam, 42, 333–338.
Yadav, S., Deb, P., Kumar, S., Pandey, V. and Pandey, P. K. (2016). Trends in major and minor meteorological variables and their influence on reference evapotranspiration for mid Himalayan region at east Sikkim, India. J. Mt. Sci., 13, 302–315.
Yue, S. and Hashino, M. (2003). Long term trends of annual andmonthly precipitation in Japan, J. Am. Water. Resour., 39, 587–596.
Bisht, D. S., Chatterjee, C., Raghuwanshi, N. S. and Sridhar, V. (2018). Spatiotemporal trends of rainfall across Indian river basins, Theor. Appl. Climatol., 132, 419–436.
Bond, N. R., Lake, P. S. and Arthington, A. H. (2008). The impacts of drought on freshwater ecosystems: an Australian perspective, Hydrobiologia, 600, 3-16.
Caloiero, T., Coscarelli, R. and Ferrari, E. (2017). Analysis of rainfall trend in southern Italy through the application of the ITA technique, Eur. Water, 59, 199–206
Caprio, J. M., Quamme, H. A. and Redmond, K. (2009). A statistical procedure to determine recent climate change of extreme meteorological data as applied to two locations in the northwestern North America, Climate Change, 92, 65-81.
Choudhury, B. U., Das, A, Ngachan, S. V. et al. (2012). Trend analysis of long term weather variables in mid-altitude Meghalaya, North-East India, J. Agric. Phys., 12, 12-22.
Das, S., Tomar, C. S., Saha, D., Shaw, S. O. and Singh, C. (2015). Trends in rainfall patterns over North-East India during 1961-2010, Int. J. Earth. Atmos. Sci., 2, 37–48.
Dash, S. K. and Hunt, J. C. R. (2007). Variability of climate change in India, Current Science, 93, 782-788.
Dash, S. K., Jenamani, R. K., Kalsi, S. R. and Panda, S. K. (2007). Some evidence of climate change in twentieth-century India, Climate Change, 85, 299-321.
Dash, S. K., Kulkarni, M. A., Mohanty, U. C. and Prasad, K. (2009). Changes in the characteristics of rain events in India, J. Geophys Res., 114, 1-12.
Datta, P and Bose, S. (2020). Assessing the changes in climate extremes over Karbi Anglong district of Assam, North-East India, Spat. Inf. Res., 28, 547–558.
DeGaetano, A. T. (1996). Recent trends in maximum and minimum temperature threshold exceedences in the northeastern United States, J. Climate, vol. 9, 1646-1657.
Gharphalia, B. J., Deka, R. L., Islam, A. N., Dutta, P. and Medhi, K.
(2018). Variability and Trends of Rainfall Events in the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam, India, Int. J. Curr. Microbiol. App. Sci., 7, 1902-1912.
Goswami, B. N., Venugopal, V., Sengupta, D., Madhusoodanan, M. S. and Xavier, P. K. (2006). Increasing trend of extreme rain events over India in a warming environment, Science, 314, 1442-1445.
Guhathakurta, P., Sreejith, O. P. and Menon, P. A. (2011). Impact of climate change on extreme rainfall events and flood risk in India, J Earth Syst Sc., 120, 359-373.
Hirsch, R., Slack, J. R. and Smith, R. A. (1982). Techniques of trend analysis for monthly water quality data, Water Resources Research, 18, 107-121.
Hennemuth, B., Bender, S., Bülow, K., Dreier, N., Keup-Thiel, E., Krüger, O., Mudersbach, C., Radermacher, C. and Schoetter, R. (2013). Statistical methods for the analysis of simulated and observed climate data, applied in projects and institutions dealing with climate change impact and adaptation, CSC Report 13, Climate Service Center, Germany.
Jain, S. K., Kumar, V. and Saharia, M. (2013). Analysis of rainfall and temperature trends in Northeast India, Int. J. Climatol, 33, 968-978.
Kumar, V., Jain, S. K. and Singh, Y. (2010). Analysis of long-term rainfall trends in India, Hydrological Sciences Journal, .55, 484–496.
Kendall, M. G. (1975). Rank correlation methods, 4th ed., Charles Griffin, London.
Lal, M. (2001). Climatic change implications for India's water Resources, Journal of Indian Water Resource Society, 21, 101–119.
Laskar, S. I., Kotal, S. D. and Bhowmik, S. K. R. (2014). Analysis of rainfall and temperature trends of selected stations over North East India during last century, Mausam, 65, 497–508.
Letcher, S. G. and Chazdon, R. L. (2009). Rapid recovery of biomass, Species Richness, and Species Composition in a Forest Chronosequence in Northeastern Costa Rica, Biotropica, 41, 608-617.
Lettenmaier, D. P., Wood, E. F. and Wallis, J. R. (1994). Hydro-climatological trends in the continental United States, 1948–88, Journal of Climate, 7, 586-607.
Machiwal, D., Gupta, A., Jha, M. K. and Kamble, T. (2019). Analysis of trend in temperature and rainfall time series of an Indian arid region: comparative evaluation of salient techniques, Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 136, 301–320.
Mahanta, R., Sarma, D. and Choudhury, A. (2013). Heavy rainfall occurrences in Northeast India, Int. J. Climatol., 33, 1456–1469.
Malik, A., Kumar, A., Guhathakurta, P. and Kisi, O. (2019). Spatial-temporal trend analysis of seasonal and annual rainfall (1966–2015) using innovative trend analysis method with significance test, Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 12, 1-23.
Mallick, J., Talukdar, S., Alsubih, M., Salam, R., Ahmed, M., Kahla, N. B. and Shamimuzzaman, M. (2020). Analyzing the trend of rainfall in Asir region of Saudi Arabia using the family of Mann-Kendall tests, innovative trend analysis, and detrended fluctuation analysis, Theoretical and Applied Climatology, doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03448-1.
Mann, H. B. (1945). Non-parametric tests against trend, Econometrica, 13, 245-259.
Marak, J. D. K., Sarma, A. K. and Bhattacharjya, R. K. (2020). Innovative trend analysis of spatial and temporal rainfall variations in Umiam and Umtru watersheds in Meghalaya, India, Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 142, 1397–1412.
Mooley, D. A. and Parthasarthy, B. (1984). Fluctuations of all India summer monsoon rainfall during 1871–1978, Climatic Change, 6, 287–301.
Murata, F., Hayashi, T., Matsumoto, J. and Asada, H. (2007). Rainfall in the Meghalaya plateau in Northeastern India-one of the rainiest places in the world, Nat Hazard, 42, 391-399.
Myhre, G., Alterskjær, K., Stjern, C. W., Hodnebrog, Ø., Marelle, L., Samset, B. H., Sillmann, J., Schaller, N., Fischer, E., Schulz, M. and Stohl, A. (2019). Frequency of extreme precipitation increases extensively with event rareness under global warming. Sci. Rep., 9, 1–10.
Nyaupane, N., Thakur, B., Kalra, A. and Ahmad, S. (2018). Evaluating future flood scenarios using CMIP5 climate projections, Water, 10, 1–18.
Panda, A and Sahu, N. (2020). Trend analysis of seasonal rainfall and temperature pattern in Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput districts of Odisha, India, Atmospheric Science Letters, DOI: 10.1002/asl.932.
Papalexiou, S. M. and Montanari, A. (2019). Global and regional increase of precipitation extremes under global warming. Water Resour. Res., 55, 4901–4914.
Partal, T. and Kahya, E. (2006). Trend analysis in Turkish precipitation data, Hydrological Processes, 20, 2011-2016.
Pradhan, R., Singh, N. and Singh, R. P. (2019). Onset of summer monsoon in Northeast India is preceded by enhanced transpiration. Sci. Rep. 9, 1–11.
Prokop, P. and Walanus, A. (2015). Variation in the orographic extreme rain events over the Meghalaya hills in Northeast India in the two halves of the twentieth century, Theor. Appl.Climatol., 121, 389-399.
Rajeevan, M., Bhate, J. and Jaswal, A. K. (2008). Analysis of variability and trends of extreme rainfall events over India using 104 years of gridded daily rainfall data, Geophys Res. Let.t, 35, L18707.
Ranade, A., Singh, N., Singh, H. N. and Sontakke, N. A. (2008). On variability of hydrological wet season, seasonal rainfall and rainwater potential of the river basins of India (1813-2006), Journal of Hydrological Research and Development, 23, 79-108.
Roy, S. and Balling, R. C. (2004). Trends in extreme daily precipitation indices in India, Int J Climatol, 24, 457-466.
Sen, P. K. (1968). Estimates of the regression coefficient based on Kendall's tau, J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 63, 1379-1389.
Trenberth, K. E., Dai, A., Rasmussen, R. M. and Parsons D. B. (2003). The changing character of precipitation, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 84, 1205-1217.
Thapliyal, V. and Kulshrestha, S. M. (1991). Decadal changes and trends over India, Mausam, 42, 333–338.
Yadav, S., Deb, P., Kumar, S., Pandey, V. and Pandey, P. K. (2016). Trends in major and minor meteorological variables and their influence on reference evapotranspiration for mid Himalayan region at east Sikkim, India. J. Mt. Sci., 13, 302–315.
Yue, S. and Hashino, M. (2003). Long term trends of annual andmonthly precipitation in Japan, J. Am. Water. Resour., 39, 587–596.
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Statistical analysis of long-term rainfall trends in Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, India. (2021). Journal of Applied and Natural Science, 13(1), 170-177. https://doi.org/10.31018/jans.v13i1.2442
