Indian Summer Monsoon Rainfall: Implications of Contrasting Trends in the Spatial Variability of Means and Extremes.

ABSTRACT: India's agricultural output, economy, and societal well-being are strappingly dependent on the stability of summer monsoon rainfall, its variability and extremes. Spatial aggregate of intensity and frequency of extreme rainfall events over Central India are significantly increasing, while at local scale they are spatially non-uniform with increasing spatial variability. The reasons behind such increase in spatial variability of extremes are poorly understood and the trends in mean monsoon rainfall have been greatly overlooked. Here, by using multi-decadal gridded daily rainfall data over entire India, we show that the trend in spatial variability of mean monsoon rainfall is decreasing as exactly opposite to that of extremes. The spatial variability of extremes is attributed to the spatial

SUBMITTER: Ghosh S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4963102 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature