Summary
Daily rainfall observations during the principal rainy seasons over a large part of Tropical Asia and the equatorial Pacific are analysed for persistence by fitting Markov chains of various order. Daily rainfall data of 98 stations from India, Sri Lanka and Thailand falling in the monsoonal regime and 9 stations in the non-monsoonal regime of the equatorial Pacific are examined.
The appropriate order of Markov chain is determined by analyzing wet and dry spell length characteristics and by applying the Schwarz Baysian Criterion to the arbitrary sequences of 5-day length. Markov chains of order greater than 1 are found to characterize the persistence in rainfall over India and to some extent over wet zones of Sri Lanka and central equatorial Pacific. Simple Markov chains are suggested for Thailand, the dry zone of Sri Lanka and the stations of central equatorial Pacific lying some what away from the equator.
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Dahale, S.D., Panchawagh, N., Singh, S.V. et al. Persistence in rainfall occurrence over Tropical south-east Asia and equatorial Pacific. Theor Appl Climatol 49, 27–39 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00866286
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00866286