Forecasting of the different hydro-climatic variables and impact of climate change on marine fish production in West Bengal, India.

Abstract

The current study was conceptualized to find the future trend of different hydro-climatic variables and observe their relationship with the total marine production. The present study was conducted along the coast of West Bengal, which is considered one of the important maritime state in India. Different hydro-climatic variables data were collected on a monthly basis from August 200 2 to June 2021 and forecasted u p to January 2030 with different forecasting models like trend line analysis, holt winter method, exponential smoothing method, ARIMA, and finally, the relation ship betweenvarious climatic variables an d marine production was estimated. Sea surface temperature wa s found to have an a verage increase of 0.52 oC; rainfall is predicted to increase by an average of 1.37 mm, and salinity level is going to decrease by 0.75ppt. Whereas the chlorophyll concentration will decrease to an average of 0.05 mg/m3, the air temperature will like to an average increase by 1oC from August 2002 to December 2019 compared to January 2021 to January 2030. The study revealed that marine production is highly dependent on the presence of chlorophyll concentration, followed by salinity, rainfall, SST, a nd air temperature has a very minimal role. The key finding of this study shows changing patterns of different climatic variables will greatly affect the future marine catch. The policymakers and government should strictly regulate different environment protection rules and as well as give their high concern on sustainable management.