Abstract
The precipitation patterns of seventeen locations in Bangladesh from 1961 to 2014 were studied using a cluster analysis and metric multidimensional scaling. In doing so, the current research applies four major hierarchical clustering methods to precipitation in conjunction with different dissimilarity measures and metric multidimensional scaling. A variety of clustering algorithms were used to provide multiple clustering dendrograms for a mixture of distance measures. The dendrogram of pre-monsoon rainfall for the seventeen locations formed five clusters. The pre-monsoon precipitation data for the areas of Srimangal and Sylhet were located in two clusters across the combination of five dissimilarity measures and four hierarchical clustering algorithms. The single linkage algorithm with Euclidian and Manhattan distances, the average linkage algorithm with the Minkowski distance, and Ward’s linkage algorithm provided similar results with regard to monsoon precipitation. The results of the post-monsoon and winter precipitation data are shown in different types of dendrograms with disparate combinations of sub-clusters. The schematic geometrical representations of the precipitation data using metric multidimensional scaling showed that the post-monsoon rainfall of Cox’s Bazar was located far from those of the other locations. The results of a box-and-whisker plot, different clustering techniques, and metric multidimensional scaling indicated that the precipitation behaviour of Srimangal and Sylhet during the pre-monsoon season, Cox’s Bazar and Sylhet during the monsoon season, Maijdi Court and Cox’s Bazar during the post-monsoon season, and Cox’s Bazar and Khulna during the winter differed from those at other locations in Bangladesh.
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The authors are grateful to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department for providing the data necessary for the present study. The authors especially thank the Editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions that improved the quality of this manuscript.
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Appendix A
Appendix A
Dendrograms for the pre-monsoon precipitation of 17 different locations based on different distance measures and clustering algorithms
Dendrograms for monsoon precipitation of 17 different locations using different distance measures and clustering algorithms
Dendrograms for post-monsoon precipitation of 17 different locations using different distance measures and clustering algorithms
Dendrograms for winter precipitation of 17 different locations using different distance measures and clustering algorithms
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Rahman, M.H., Matin, M.A. & Salma, U. Analysis of precipitation data in Bangladesh through hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling. Theor Appl Climatol 134, 689–705 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-017-2319-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-017-2319-y