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Some unique characteristics of atmospheric interannual variability in rainfall time series over India and the United Kingdom

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Abstract

Continuous periodogram analyses of two 50-years (1871–1920 and 1936–1985) of summer monsoon rainfall over the Indian region and one 84-years set (1893–1976) of winter half-year rainfall over England and Wales show that the power spectra of disparate rainfall regimes follow the universal and unique inverse power law form of the statistical normal distribution with the percentage contribution to total variance representating the eddy probability corresponding to the normalized standard deviation equal to [(log L/logT 50)−1] whereL is the period in years andT 50 the period up to which the cumulative percentage contribution to total variance is equal to 50. The above results are consistent with a recently developed non-deterministic cell dynamical system model for atmospheric flows. The implications of the above results for prediction of interannual variability of rainfall is discussed.

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Selvam, A.M., Pethkar, J.S. & Kulkarni, M.K. Some unique characteristics of atmospheric interannual variability in rainfall time series over India and the United Kingdom. Adv. Atmos. Sci. 12, 377–385 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02656987

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