Trends in Monsoon Rainfall Extreme over Andhra Pradesh and Telangana

Abstract

Scientific evidence shows that climate change has begun to manifest itself, globally, in the form of increased downpours and storms, rising temperature and sea level, retreating glaciers, etc. Climate change is increasingly seen as the major threat to the food security and sustainability of agriculture in India. The effects of the change in climatic parameters are not similar in all the places throughout the country. The occurrence of extreme weather events like droughts, cyclones, high-intensity precipitation, cold day & cold nights and warm days & warm nights, etc. has changed a lot during past decades throughout India (Chakraborty et al., 2019). But their proportion varied from region to region. Extreme events may have major societal, economic, and environmental impacts. Precipitation is a fundamental component of the climate and changes in its patterns can have large implications for human health, ecosystems, plants, and animals in general and in agriculture in particular. Though the amount of the total monsoon rainfall and its change is important for climate change studies, the changes in the extreme events may bear large meanings starting from flood risk analysis to the proper agricultural management at the ground level. Changes in the extreme weather events can also influence the type and the distribution of monsoonal rainfall while there may not be any change in the total monsoonal rainfall. As the patterns of these extremes are highly variable over space and time, the study of the extremes at a local scale using the information stored in the historical climate datasets may provide crucial information in this regard. Goswami et al. (2006) have reported an increase in the rainfall extremes (both > 100 and >150 mm/day) and a decrease in the moderate rainfall events during monsoon season over central India. It has also been reported in the literature that central and peninsular India has been influenced by a thunderstorm, high rainfall, or many times drought events (De et al., 2005). These show that the region remains one of the crucial zones which gets to face the effects of extreme too often than other parts of the country