Case study of rainfall and temperature assessment through trend and homogeneity analyses in Vadodara and Chhotaudepur district of Gujarat State, India

Abstract

This study aims to assess the climate change impact on the rainfall and temperature data of the Vadodara-Chhotaudepur district of India and to focus on the environmental challenges related to the rainfall and temperature in the present state of development, land use, industrialization, and urbanization. The study utilized nine trend analysis methods, namely linear regression (LR), Sen's robust slope estimator (SS), Mann-Kendall test (MK), Spearman's rank correlation (SRC), the trend-free pre-whitening (TFPW), variance correction approach by Hamed and Rao (1998) with MK test (MK-CF1), variance correction approach by Yue and Wang (2004) with MK test (MK-CF2), block bootstrap with MK test (BBS-MK), and graphical method as innovative trend analysis (ITA), applied on monthly, annual, and seasonal scales. Additionally, the study also employed four homogeneity analysis methods, including Pettitt's test, standard normal homogeneity test (SNHT), Buishand's test, and Von Neumann Ratio test (VNRTs). The IMD (Indian meteorological department) gridded long-term rainfall data from 1901 to 2019 and temperature data from 1951 to 2019 are used in the present study to assess the homogeneity and trends of the data series. Results showed a warming trend of maximum temperature (MaxT) and minimum temperature (MinT) at the monthly, annual, and seasonal time scale and significant (at 5%) warming trend in annual MinT in the entire study area. Annual rainfall showed negative trend in the study area with significant (at 5%) negative trend in eastern deforested area western industrial and area adjacent to thermal power station. The change point is detected in annual rainfall time series in eastern forest area in 1959 and western area in 1983, i.e., after development of the industries and commissioning of thermal power station in the western study area. The trend rate of MaxT and MinT has been recognized as 0.004°C/year and 0.019°C/year, respectively, for the data period of 1951 to 2019. The annual rainfall trend rate has been observed as -0.743mm/year for the data range 1901 to 2019. All trend analysis methods revealed consistent results except MK-CF2 method, which portraits greater number of significant trends in trend analysis methods.