Abstract
Physiography of a region has a greater impact on climatic variables such as rainfall. The influence of physiography on rainfall has been analysed in various regions of the world, but in India, the number of such studies is quite inadequate keeping in mind its vast extent. Rainfall pattern shows large-scale regional variations. There is an absence of a comprehensive study dealing with the variability of rainfall in Ganga Basin. Therefore, in the present study, India Meteorological Department’s rain gauge stations of the Ganga Basin have been selected for the analysis of rainfall variation. The rain gauge stations are selected in such a manner that they represent a wide range of physiographic differences that is from mountains to plain. The general elevation of the selected stations varies from 100 to 2000 m. The analysis found that there is high variability in rainfall distribution and there is an increase in rainfall with altitude. Studies of this kind provide an insight to understand the behaviour of climatic variables in different physiographic regions and are very helpful to identify the areas that are more vulnerable to climate change.
References
Attri SD, Tyagi A (2010) Climate profile of India. India Meteorological Department Ministry of Earth Sciences, New Delhi. Environment Monitoring and Research Centre, India Meteorological Department, Lodi Road, New Delhi-110003 (India)
Basistha A, Arya DS, Goel NK (2009) Analysis of historical changes in rainfall in the Indian Himalayas. Roy Meteorol Soc 29:555–572
Boyles RP, Raman S (2003) Analysis of climate trends in north Carolina (1949–1998). Environ Int 29:263–275
Dash SK, Mamgain A (2011) Changes in the frequency of different categories of temperature extremes in India. J Appl Meteorol Climatol 50:1842–1858
Dash SK, Jenamani RK, Kalsi SR, Panda SK (2007) Some evidence of climate change in twentieth-century India. Clim Change 85:299–321
Diaz HF, Grosjean M, Graumlich L (2003) Climate variability and change in high elevation regions: past, present and future. Clim Change 59:1–4
Dobrowski SZ et al (2009) How much influence does landscape-scale physiography have on air temperature in a mountain environment? Agric For Meteorol 149:1751–1758
Dore MHI (2005) Climate change and changes in global precipitation patterns: what do we know. Environ Int 31:1167–1181
Gan TY (1998) Hydroclimatic trends and possible climatic warming in the Canadian Prairies. Water Resour Res 34(11):3009–3015
Hanif MK, Hayyat AH, Adnan S (2013) Latitudinal precipitation characteristics and trends in Pakistan. J Hydrol 492:266–272
Hastenrath S, Rosen A (1983) Patterns of Indian monsoon rainfall anomalies. Tellus 35(A):324–331
IMD (2010) Climatological tables of observatories in India 1961-1990. The Director General of Meteorology, New Delhi
Jaiswal AK (2009) Sunshine duration climatology and trends in association with other climatic factors over India for 1970-2006. Mausam 60(4):437–454
Kothyari UC, Singh VP, Aravamuthan V (1997) An investigation of changes in rainfall and temperature regimes of the Ganga basin in India. Water Resour Manag 11:17–34
Krishnamurthy V, Shukla J (2000) Intraseasonal and interannual variability of rainfall over India. J Clim 13:4366–4377
Kumar RK et al (1992) Spatial and subseasonal patterns of long term trends of Indian summer monsoon rainfall. Int J Climatol 12(3):257–268
Kumar V, Jain SK, Singh Y (2010) Analysis of long-term rainfall trends in India. Hydrol Sci J 55(4):484–496
Mosmann V et al (2004) Detection of statistically significant trends in the summer precipitation of mainland Spain. Atmos Res 70:43–53
Mustapha A (2013) Detecting surface water quality trends using Mann-Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimates. IJ AI R: 108–114. ISSN: 2278–7844
Parthasarathy B, Mooley DA (1978) Some features of long homogeneous series of Indian summer monsoon rainfall. Mon Weather Rev 106:771–780
Parthasarathy B, Dhar ON (1976) A study of trends and periodicities in the seasonal and annual rainfall of India. Indian J Meteorol Hydrol Geophys 27(1):23–28
Prell WL, Kutzbach JE (1992) Sensitivity of the Indian monsoon to forcing parameters and implications for its evolution. Nature 360:647–651
Rao NG (1999) Variation of the SO relationship with summer and winter monsoon rainfall over India: 1872–1993. J Clim 12:3486–3495
Rao GSP, Jaswal AK, Kumar MS (2004) Effects of urbanization on meteorological parameters. Mausam 55(3):429–440
Singh N, Sontakke NA (2002) On climate fluctuations and environmental changes of the Indo-Gangetic plains, India. Clim Change 52:287–313
Singh P, Kumar V, Thomas T, Arora M (2007) Changes in rainfall and relative humidity in river basins in Northwest and Central India. Hydrol Process. doi:10.1002/hyp.6871
Singh N et al (2005) Recent trends in spatiotemporal variation of rainfall over India—an investigation into Basin scale rainfall fluctuations. IAHS-AISH Publ 296:273–282
Srivastava HN et al (1992) Decadal trends in climate over India. Mausam 43(1):7–20
Varikoden H, Kumar KK, Babu CA (2013) Long term trends of seasonal and monthly rainfall in different intensity ranges over Indian subcontinent. Mausam 64(3):481–488
Ventura F, Pisa PR, Ardozzoni E (2002) Temperature and Precipitation trends in Bologna (Italy) from 1952 to 1999. Atmos Res 61:203–214
Vines RG (1986) Rainfall patterns in India. J Climatol 6:135–148
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Parveen, U., Sreekesh, S. (2018). Physiographic Influence on Rainfall Variability: A Case Study of Upper Ganga Basin. In: Mal, S., Singh, R., Huggel, C. (eds) Climate Change, Extreme Events and Disaster Risk Reduction. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56469-2_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56469-2_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56468-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56469-2
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)