Spatio-temporal heterogeneity and changes in extreme precipitation over eastern Himalayan catchments India

Abstract

This study draws attention on the extreme precipitation changes over the eastern Himalayan region of the Teesta river catchment. To explore the precipitation variability and heterogeneity, observed (1979–2005) and statistically downscaled (2006–2100) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase Five earth system model global circulation model daily precipitation datasets are used. The trend analysis is performed to analyze the long-term changes in precipitation scenarios utilizing non-parametric Mann–Kendall (MK) test, Kendall Tau test, and Sen’s slope estimation. A quantile regression (QR) method has been applied to assess the lower and upper tails changes in precipitation scenarios. Precipitation extreme indices were generated to quantify the extremity of precipitation in observed and projected time domains. To portrait the spatial heterogeneity, the standard deviation and skewness are computed for precipitation extreme indices. The results show that the overall precipitation amount will be increased in the future over the Himalayan region. The monthly time series trend analysis based results reflect an interannual variability in precipitation. The QR analysis results showed significant increments in precipitation amount in the upper and lower quantiles. The extreme precipitation events are increased during October to June months; whereas, it decreases from July to September months. The representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 based experiments showed extreme changes in precipitation compared to RCP2.6 and RCP4.5. The precipitation extreme indices results reveal that the intensity of precipitation events will be enhanced in future time. The spatial standard deviation and skewness based observations showed a significant variability in precipitation over the selected Himalayan catchment.