Abstract
This study analyzes and forecasts the long-term Spatio-temporal changes in rainfall using the data from 1901 to 2015 across India at meteorological divisional level. The Pettitt test was employed to detect the abrupt change point in time frame, while the Mann-Kendall (MK) test and Sen’s Innovative trend analysis were performed to analyze the rainfall trend. The Artificial Neural Network-Multilayer Perceptron (ANN-MLP) was employed to forecast the upcoming 15 years rainfall across India. We mapped the rainfall trend pattern for whole country by using the geo-statistical technique like Kriging in ArcGIS environment. Results show that the most of the meteorological divisions exhibited significant negative trend of rainfall in annual and seasonal scales, except seven divisions during. Out of 17 divisions, 11 divisions recorded noteworthy rainfall declining trend for the monsoon season at 0.05% significance level, while the insignificant negative trend of rainfall was detected for the winter and pre-monsoon seasons. Furthermore, the significant negative trend (−8.5) was recorded for overall annual rainfall. Based on the findings of change detection, the most probable year of change detection was occurred primarily after 1960 for most of the meteorological stations. The increasing rainfall trend had observed during the period 1901–1950, while a significant decline rainfall was detected after 1951. The rainfall forecast for upcoming 15 years for all the meteorological divisions’ also exhibit a significant decline in the rainfall. The results derived from ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis data exhibit that increasing/decreasing precipitation convective rate, elevated low cloud cover and inadequate vertically integrated moisture divergence might have influenced on change of rainfall in India. Findings of the study have some implications in water resources management considering the limited availability of water resources and increase in the future water demand.
Highlights
This study analyzes and forecasts the long-term Spatio-temporal changes in rainfall using the data from 1901 to 2015 across India at meteorological divisional level
The present study shows that the overall annual and seasonal variability of rainfall was highest in the sub-divisions of Western India, while the lowest variability was found in Eastern and North India
The findings of MK test on overall annual and seasonal rainfall reports that the sub-divisions of North-East, South and Eastern India were detected significant negative trend, while the sub-divisions like Sub-Himalayan Bengal, Gangetic Bengal, Jammu & Kashmir, Konkan & Goa, Madhya Maharastra and Marathwada were recorded positive trend
Summary
This study analyzes and forecasts the long-term Spatio-temporal changes in rainfall using the data from 1901 to 2015 across India at meteorological divisional level. Srivastava et al.[3] and Islam et al.[4] reported that the changes of rainfall quantities and frequencies directly changing the stream flow pattern and its demand, spatiotemporal allocation of run-off, ground water reserves and soil moisture. Multiple studies have conducted trend analysis using MK test and reported that India as a whole has not recorded significant trend of increase or decrease in annual average rainfall[7,46,49]. To get reliable and reasonable results of trend, we have obtained both approaches like trend analysis before change point and first change point analysis followed by trend detection
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