Trend Detection Analyses of Rainfall of Whole India for the Time Period 1950–2006

Abstract

Climate change is certain. Significant warming in 20th century’s second half, emanated into extreme shift in hydrology of India. Evaluation of precipitation trends is critically crucial for a country such as India, whose economy and food security are based on timely water availability. Long time period instrumental rainfall series is important for climate studies. Therefore, in the present work, trend analyses of longest instrumental rainfall series of whole India is performed for annual, monthly and seasonal temporal scales for the period 1950–2006. Dependency of data is assessed by application of autocorrelation plot or correlogram. MK test or MK-CF2 test is applied for evaluation of trend significance for independent or dependent data, respectively. SS test is applied for evaluation of trend magnitude. Also, ITA plot and SC are used to aid the results of trend analyses. The results showed existence of significant increasing trend in April month rainfall series.