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Unraveling diurnal asymmetry of surface temperature under warming scenarios in diverse agroclimate zones of India

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Abstract

Diurnal temperature range (DTR) which reflects the difference between the daily maximum (Tmax) and minimum temperature (Tmin) is an important indication of changing climate and a critical thermal metric to assess the impact on agriculture, biodiversity, water resources, and human health. The major aim of this study is to assess the probable future spatio-temporal changes in the Tmax, Tmin, and DTR and their long-term warming trend from 2006 to 2099 under two representative concentration pathways (hereafter RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) over diverse agroclimatic regions of India. The observed data from India Meteorological Department (IMD) was used to evaluate the performance of climate models (1970–2005). The result shows a very slight underestimation in DTR by models compared to the observed. In future projections, we found a reduction in DTR (0.001 to 0.020 °C/year) partly linked to the substantial increase in Tmin (0.020 to 0.071 °C/year) than Tmax (0.031 to 0.060 °C/year) that was stronger in far twenty-first-century future under RCP8.5. The decline in DTR was profound and consistent over northern India (up to 3 °C) surrounding the Indo-Gangetic Plain, western dry region, and part of central India with the highest decline observed in winter and pre-monsoon season. However, a decline in DTR was also anticipated over the plateau, coastal, and eastern Himalayas region. Change in land use land cover (LULC) also complimented the decline in DTR. The main findings of the study advocate implementation of a robust framework for climate change adaptation strategies to mitigate adverse consequences to the natural ecosystem and human health over specific regions arising due to declining DTR.

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Data availability

The CMIP5-CORDEX South Asia data available from Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR), Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) at http://cccr.tropmet.res.in/home/esgf_node.jsp. Observed data available from the India Meteorology Department (IMD) at http://www.imdpune.gov.in/Clim_Pred_LRF_New/Grided_Data_Download.html. The Land-Use Harmonization 2 (LUH2) data were available at https://daac.ornl.gov/VEGETATION/guides/LUH2_GCB2019.html.

Code availability

Authors declare that all software application and custom code support their published claims and comply with field standards.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Groups, the former coordinating body of CORDEX and CMIP5 for producing and making the data available. The authors thank the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) infrastructure and the Climate Data Portal hosted at the Centre for Climate Change Research (CCCR), Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), for providing CORDEX South Asia data. The authors also thank the India Meteorology Department (IMD) for providing the observed climate dataset. The authors also thank the Land-Use Harmonization 2 (LUH2) project for making their datasets freely available for use.

Funding

Authors thank the Climate Change Programme, Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, for financial support (DST/CCP/CoE/80/2017(G)).

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  1. DST-Mahamana Centre of Excellence in Climate Change Research, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

    Nidhi Singh, Manisha Chaturvedi & R. K. Mall

  2. Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine (IUF), Düsseldorf, Germany

    Nidhi Singh

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Contributions

Nidhi Singh: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, interpretation, review and writing of the original draft; Manisha Chaturvedi: methodology, formal analysis, interpretation; R K Mall: conceptualization, methodology, interpretation as well as review and editing of the draft, resources, funding acquisition, supervision, project administration.

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Correspondence to R. K. Mall.

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Singh, N., Chaturvedi, M. & Mall, R.K. Unraveling diurnal asymmetry of surface temperature under warming scenarios in diverse agroclimate zones of India. Theor Appl Climatol 152, 321–335 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-023-04407-2

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