Spatio-temporal dynamics of temperature and rainfall across jute growing districts of India

Abstract

Climate variations in relation to meteorological variables has received global attention and thus study of the spatiotemporal dynamics of temperature, rainfall is the central process to assess climate-induced changes and advocate feasible adaptation strategies. The present study examines changes in rainfall and temperature over 5 important jute growing districts of West Bengal, India. Both rainfall and temperature trend for period of 1980-2019 were analysed using Mann-Kendall test and Sen's slope estimator. Analysis of the data for 39 years revealed that while Howrah and Hooghly district had decreasing rainfall trend, Burdwan and Nadia districts showed increasing trend of rainfall during jute growing period. North-24 Parganas recorded negative rainfall trend. Compared with rainfall, lesser variability of temperature was recorded for all the districts except Burdwan. The positive Sen’s Slope exhibited by Nadia and North-24 Parganas showed an increasing temperature trend. The results herein suggests that jute sowing should be done by March end-April to take advantage of the optimum temperature (25-35 °C) and rainfall due to Norwesters. Thus, studying spatio- temporal dynamics of temperature and rainfall across jute growing states of West Bengal will be helpful for climate change adaptation and successful cropping.