Historical Trend Analysis of A Terai Himalayan District Of Nepal : A Case Study

Authors

  • Sunil Shah  Department of Irrigation, Ministry of Irrigation, Government of Nepal, Nepal
  • Deepak Khare  Department of Water Resources Development & Management, IIT, Roorkee, India
  • P. K. Mishra  National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, India
  • Lakhwinder Singh  Department of Water Resources Development & Management, IIT, Roorkee, India

Keywords:

Rainfall trend, temperature trend, Mann-Kendall test, Sen's Slope Estimator

Abstract

This study work focused on key climatic variable rainfall together with temperature of the study area Morang District located in Eastern Development Region, Nepal. As rainfall is the ultimate natural source for the recharge of surface and groundwater resources, it became necessary to analyze the trend of rainfall. Rainfall and temperature data of 30 years (1982 to 2011) on daily basis was processed to find out the monthly, seasonal and annual rainfall and temperature variability by using nonparametric tests. The Mann-Kendall Test for monotonic analysis of trend together with non-parametric Sen's Slope Estimator was used to estimate the magnitude of trend. The trend of 30 years rainfall data has been drawn on monthly, seasonal and annual basis. The statistical analysis of whole reference time series data represents positive trend on annual basis. In summer, spring, pre-monsoon, monsoon, rabi and kharif seasons the rainfall trends are positive while in winter, autumn and post-monsoon seasons the precipitation trends are decreasing. Individually seven months (January, April, May, June, July, August and November) indicated rising trend while remaining five months (February, March, September, October and December) showed falling trend. Similarly, the trends of 30 years maximum and minimum temperature data have also been investigated on monthly, seasonal and annual basis. The trends showed that both maximum and minimum temperatures are rising irrespective of temporal scales. In case of maximum temperature, the month of January and cold winter season showed falling trend otherwise all other months and seasons showed rising trend while the minimum temperature trend analysis showed rising trend in all months and seasons.

References

  1. Ceppi, P.; Scherrer, S.C.; Fischer, A.M.; Appenzeller, C. Revisiting Swiss temperature trends 1959-2008. Int. J. Climatol. 2012, 32, 203-213.
  2. Dhorde, A. and Gadgil, A. S., Long-term temperature trends at four largest cities of India during the twentieth century. J. Indian Geophys. Union, 2009, 13, 85-97.
  3. Ficklin, D.L.; Stewart, I.T.; Maurer, E.P. Climate change impacts on streamflow and subbasin-scale hydrology in the Upper Colorado River Basin. PLoS ONE 2013, 8, e71297.
  4. Fischiln A., et al. in IPCC 2007. Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnearability. Contribution of Working Group II to the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, Ecosystems, their properties, goods and services, eds Parry M.L., Canziani O.F., Palutikof J.P., van der linden P.J., Hanson C.E. (Cambridge University press, Cambridge, UK), (2007.
  5. Gadgil, A. and Dhorde, A., Temperature trends in twentieth century at Pune, India. Atmos. Environ., 2005, 39, 6550-6556.
  6. Gocic, M.; Trajkovic, S. Analysis of changes in meteorological variables using Mann-Kendall and Sen’s slope estimator statistical tests in Serbia. Glob. Planet. Chang. 2013, 100, 172-182.
  7. Griffiths, G. M., et al., Change in mean temperature as a predictor of extreme temperature change in the Asia-Pacific region, Int. J. Climatol., 25, 1301-1330, (2005).
  8. Helsel, D. R. and Hirsch, R. M., Statistical Methods in Water Resources, Elsevier, New York, 1992.
  9. Hingane, L. S., Rupa Kumar, K. and Murty, V. R., Long-term trends of surface air temperature in India. Int. J. Climatol., 1985, 5, 521-528.
  10. IPCC, Climate change. “Climate change impacts, adaption and vulnerability”. Working group II contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. Summery for policymakers, 23, (2007).
  11. Jain, S.K.; Kumar, V.; Saharia, M. Analysis of rainfall and temperature trends in northeast India. Int. J. Clim. 2012.
  12. Jones, P. D., M. New, D. E. Parker, S. Martin, and I. G. Rigor, Surface air temperature and its variations over the last 150 years, Rev. Geophys., 37, 173-199, (1999).
  13. Kalnay, E. and Cai, M., “Impact of urbanization and landuse changes on climate”. Nature 423,528 - 531, (2003).
  14. Kampata, J.M. Parida, B.P. Moalafhi, D.B., “Trend analysis of rainfall in the headstreams of the Zambezi River Basin in Zambia”, Physics and Chemistry of Earth 33, 621 - 625 (2008).
  15. Kendall, M.G., “Rank Correlation Methods”, 4th edition. Charles Griffin, London, UK, (1975).
  16. Klein Tank, A. M. G., and G. P. Können, Trends indices of daily temperature and precipitation extremes in Europe, 1946-99, J. Clim., 16, 3665-3680, (2003).
  17. Klein Tank, A. M. G., et al., Changes in daily temperature and precipitation extremes in central and south Asia, J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2005JD006316, in press, (2006).
  18. Kothawale, D. R., Revadekar, J. V. and Rupa Kumar, K., Recent trends in pre-monsoon daily temperature extremes over India. J. Earth Syst. Sci., 2010, 119, 51-65.
  19. Kumar, V., Jain, S. K. and Singh, Y., Analysis of long-term rainfall trends in India. Hydrol. Sci. J., 2010, 55, 484-496.
  20. Kundzewicz, Z. W., Change detection in hydrological records - a review of the methodology. Hydrol. Sci., J., 2004, 49(1), 7-19.
  21. Lettenmaier, D. P., Wood, E. F. and Wallis, J. R., Hydroclimatological trends in the continental United States, 1948-88. J. Climate, 1994, 7, 586-607.
  22. Longobardi, A.; Villani, P. Trend Analysis of annual and seasonal rainfall time series in the Mediterranean area. Int. J. Climatol. 2009.
  23. MAKESENS 1.0, “Mann-Kendall Test and Sens’s Slope Estimates for Trend of Annual Data”, Finnish Meteorological Institute, (2002).
  24. Mann, H.B., “Non-parametric test against trend”, Econometrica 13, 245 - 259 (1945).
  25. Meehl G.A., et al. in Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Global climate projections, eds Solomon S., Qin D., Manning M., Chen Z., Marquis M., Averyt K. B., Tignor M., Miller H. L. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK), (2007).
  26. Meinshausen M., Meinshausen N., Hare W., Raper S. C. B., Frieler K., Knutti R., Frame D.J., Allen M. R.  Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2oC Nature 458 1158-1162 doi:10.1038/nature08017 (doi:10.1038/nature08017) (2009).
  27. Mirza, M. Q., Warrick, R. A., Ericksen, N. J. and Kenny, G. J., Trends and persistence in precipitation in the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna river basins. Hydrol. Sci. J., 1998, 43, 845-858.
  28. Mooley, D. A. and Parthasarthy, B., Fluctuations of all India summer monsoon rainfall during 1871-1978. Climatic Change, 1984, 6, 287-301.
  29. Pal, I. and Al-Tabbaa, A., Assessing seasonal precipitation trends in India using parametric and non-parametric statistical techniques. Theor. Appl. Climatol., 2010, DOI: 10.1007/s00704-010-0277-8.
  30. Pal, I. and Al-Tabbaa, A., Long-term changes and variability of monthly extreme temperatures in India. Theor. Appl. Climatol., 2010, 100, 45-56.
  31. Partal, T. and Kahya, E., Trend analysis in Turkish precipitation data. Hydrol. Process, 2006, 20, 2011-2026.
  32. Rio, D.S.; Herrero, L.; Pinto-Gomes, C.; Penas, A. Spatial analysis of mean temperature trends in Spain over the period 1961-2006. Glob. Platin. Chang. 2011, 78, 65-75.
  33. Rogelj J., Nabel J., Chen C., Hare W., Markmann K., Meinshausen M., Schaeffer M., Macey K., Hohne N. Copenhagen Accord pledges are paltry nature 464 1126-1128 doi:10.1038/4641126a (doi:10.1038/4641126a), (2010).
  34. Sayemuzzaman, M.; Jha, M.K. Seasonal and annual precipitation time series trend analysis in North Carolina, United States. Atmos. Res. 2014, 137, 183-194.
  35. Sen, P.K., “Estimates of regression coefficient based on Kendall’s tau”, Journal of American Statistical Association 39, 1379 - 1389 (1968).
  36. Shrestha, A. B., Wake, C. P., Dibb, J. E. and Mayewski, P. A., Precipitation fluctuations in the Nepal Himalaya and its vicinity and relationship with some large scale climatological parameters. Int. J. Climatol., 2000, 20, 317-327.
  37. Subbaramayya, I. and Naidu, C. V., Spatial variations and trends in the Indian monsoon rainfall. Int. J. Climatol., 1992, 12, 597-609.
  38. Xu, K. Milliam, J.D. Xu, H., “Temporal trend of precipitation and runoff in major Chinese rivers since 1951”. Global and Planetary Change 73, 219 - 232 (2010).
  39. Yu, Y. S., Zou, S. and Whittemore, D., Non-parametric trend analysis of water quality data of rivers in Kansas. J. Hydrol., 1993, 150, 61-80.
  40. Yue, S. and Hashino, M., Temperature trends in Japan: 1900- 1990. Theor. Appl. Climatol., 2003, 75, 15-27.
  41. Zhang, X., L. A. Vincent, W. D. Hogg, and A. Niitsoo, Temperature and precipitation trends in Canada during the 20th century, Atmos. Ocean, 38, 395-429, (2000).
  42. Zhao, P.; Jones, P.; Cao, L.; Yan, Z.; Zha, S.; Zhu, Y.; Yu, Y.; Tang, G. Trend of surface air temperature in Eastern China and associated large-scale climate variability over the last 100 years. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 2014, 27, 4693-4703.

International Journal of Scientific Research in Science, Engineering and Technology

Downloads

Published

2017-12-31

Issue

Volume 3, Issue 8, November-December-2017

Section

Research Articles

License

Copyright (c) IJSRSET

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

[1]
Sunil Shah, Deepak Khare, P. K. Mishra, Lakhwinder Singh, " Historical Trend Analysis of A Terai Himalayan District Of Nepal : A Case Study , International Journal of Scientific Research in Science, Engineering and Technology(IJSRSET), Print ISSN : 2395-1990, Online ISSN : 2394-4099, Volume 3, Issue 8, pp.542-560, November-December-2017.