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Characterization of future climate extremes over Tamil Nadu, India, using high-resolution regional climate model simulation

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Abstract

Tamil Nadu, an agriculturally important state in India, is recurrently exposed to floods, cyclones, and droughts that have devastating effects on human, agriculture, and economy. This persuades the study to focus on future climate extremities of the state. The future climate extremes are examined using daily temperature and rainfall simulations developed by Hadley Center’s Regional Climate Model termed PRECIS (Providing REgional Climates for Impacts Studies) at a horizontal resolution of 25 km. The study uses the simulations that are driven by the lateral boundary condition of HadCM3Q0 (Hadley Centre Coupled Model-Q0) generated by a Perturbed Physical Ensemble of 17 ensembles under A1B scenario for the period of 2005 to 2095. Extreme indices have been acquired from the simulations using RClimDex. The trends of extreme indices are computed and verified for statistical significance using Mann–Kendall and Sen’s slope test. The changes in extreme indices with respect to baseline (1970–2000) reveal that almost all temperature indices denote a highly significant trend. The minimum temperature indices have shown prominent increase compared with maximum temperature indices, which is also upheld by the significant decrease in the diurnal temperature range trend. The summer days above 40 °C have indicated a substantial increase with a stronger slope of 0.77. However, the rainfall indices depict the insignificant trend. The changes in extreme wet days (R99p) and very wet days (R95p) exhibit a positive shift, and the increase of maximum 1-day rainfall is projected to be higher than maximum 5-day rainfall. Furthermore, the probability of rainfall indices exemplifies the increase of intense rainfall by the end of the century. The overall results of indices intimate that Tamil Nadu will be shifted to the extreme warmer and wetter condition by 2080s (2065–2095). Such information will act as a baseline to study the future impact assessment on different sectors thereby supporting policymakers and stakeholders to formulate suitable adaptation and mitigation strategies.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Met office, UK, for providing Lateral Boundary Condition data and assisting in using PRECIS. The authors also thank the ETCCDMI for making the software freely accessible for extreme analysis. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Department of Environment, Government of Tamil Nadu, for financially supporting Centre for Climate Change & Adaptation Research (CCC&AR). The authors are also thankful to Dr. Jayanthi Narendran for supporting and technically guiding the CCC&AR team.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation Research, Anna University, Chennai, 600025, India

    Rajadurai Geetha, Andimuthu Ramachandran, Kandasamy Palanivelu, Prasanta Kumar Bal & Perumal Thirumurugan

  2. Department of Information Science and Technology, Anna University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600025, India

    Rajadurai Geetha, J. Indumathi & G. V. Uma

  3. Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Prasanta Kumar Bal

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  1. Rajadurai Geetha
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Correspondence to Rajadurai Geetha.

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Geetha, R., Ramachandran, A., Indumathi, J. et al. Characterization of future climate extremes over Tamil Nadu, India, using high-resolution regional climate model simulation. Theor Appl Climatol 138, 1297–1309 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-019-02901-0

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