Evaluation of Climate Change Impact on Rainfall Variation in West Bengal

SS Nandargi¹* and K Barman²

¹Scientist, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pashan, Pune, India
²M.Sc Geoinformatics, Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University, Institute of Environment Education and Research, Pune, India

*Corresponding Author: SS Nandargi, Scientist, Short Term Variation and Climate Prediction Department, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pashan, Pune, India.

Received: May 26, 2018; Published: June 14, 2018

Citation: SS Nandargi and K Barman. “Evaluation of Climate Change Impact on Rainfall Variation in West Bengal". Acta Scientific Agriculture 2.7 (2018).

Abstract

  Rainfall is important parameters of weather and climatology. Being located in close vicinity of Bay of Bengal, West Bengal experiences large vagaries in the monsoon and annual rainfall. In view of this, in the present study different aspects of monsoon and an- nual rainfall variation for the two meteorological sub-divisions are studied with reference to Standardized rainfall anomaly index, Precipitation concentration index, and coefficient of variation using monthly rainfall data (1901 - 2016) of West Bengal. The analysis revealed that the spatial and temporal analysis are influenced by climate change especially 1990 onward showing increase in percentage of dry years in Gangetic West Bengal (75% to 97%) although increase in rainfall is seen during 2001 - 2016. Even southern districts of Sub-Himalayan West Bengal showed increase in dry year’s percentage (69% to 84%). This is serious condition from agricultural as well as water resources planning point of view.

Keywords: West Bengal; Climate Change; Rainfall Variability; Statistical Analysis; Precipitation Ratio; Standardized Rainfall Anomaly Index

Copyright: © 2018 SS Nandargi and K Barman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.