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Trend analysis of rainfall and temperature and its relationship over India

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Abstract

This study investigated the trends in rainfall and temperature and the possibility of any rational relationship between the trends over the homogeneous regions over India. Annual maximum temperature shows an increasing trend in all the homogeneous temperature regions and corresponding annual rainfall also follow the same pattern in all the regions, except North East. As far as monthly analysis is concerned, no definite pattern has been observed between trends in maximum and minimum temperature and rainfall, except during October. Increasing trends of maximum and minimum temperature during October accelerate the water vapor demand and most of the lakes, rivers, ponds and other water bodies with no limitation of water availability during this time fulfills the water vapor demand and shows an increasing trend of rainfall activity. This study shows there exists no direct relationship between increasing rainfall and increasing maximum temperature when monthly or seasonal pattern is concerned over meteorological subdivisions of India, however we can make a conclusion that the relation between the trends of rainfall and temperature have large scale spatial and temporal dependence.

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The authors are grateful to one anonymous reviewer and Editor-in-Chief for critically going through the manuscript and giving valuable suggestions which improved the quality of the manuscript.

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Subash, N., Sikka, A.K. Trend analysis of rainfall and temperature and its relationship over India. Theor Appl Climatol 117, 449–462 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-013-1015-9

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