Spatio-temporal assessment of agroclimatic indices and the monsoon pattern in the Banas River Basin, India

Environmental Challenges

Mukand S Babel¹  Devesh Sharma²  Akanksha Rani³  Aditya Sharma⁴ 

[1] Corresponding author at: Central University of Rajasthan, India.;Department of Atmospheric Science, School of Earth Sciences, Central University of Rajasthan, NH-8, Bandarsindri, Kishangarh 305817, Ajmer, India;Department of Environmental Science, School of Earth Sciences, Central University of Rajasthan, NH-8, Bandarsindri, Kishangarh 305817, Ajmer, India;Water Engineering and Management (WEM), Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), P. O. Box 4 Klong Luang, Pathumthani 12120, Thailand;

关键词: Agro-climatic indices;    Climate change;    Mann-kendall test;    Monsoon;    River basin;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Climate change has intense environmental and socioeconomic consequences. It is a major challenge for farmers which directly affects the development of agriculture productivity through climatic factors like monsoon variability which is mainly involved in rain-fed agriculture. To analyze climate change in relation to agriculture, a wide variety of agro-climatic indices has been proposed by the scientific community. The trend of agro-climatic indices and changes in monsoon patterns were investigated using historical grid data in the Banas River basin, India. For this study, 43 years of gridded historical datasets of temperature and precipitation were collected from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) from 1971 to 2013. For climatic indices, trend analysis and test of significance using the Mann-Kendall method were performed. Rainfall deciles, standard precipitation index (SPI), and reconnaissance drought index (RDI) were analyzed to understand the spatio-temporal changes in the agroclimatic indices in the study basin. The results show that SPI and RDI had significantly decreased, whereas a non-significant rise was observed in the aridity index and the seasonality index. Further, the onset and offset of monsoons were also studied for two different historical periods to understand the changing patterns over the last few decades. It was observed that there is an increase in the monsoon duration in 1996–2013, as compared to the period of 1971–1995. The seasonality index (SI) and aridity index (AI) has increased in the north-eastern and south-western of the river basin in the last 43 years. Overall, it can be concluded from the study that the change in precipitation and temperature has put an impact on agro-climatic indices. Therefore, depending on the future climatic condition, if this trend continues, it can affect the cropping pattern of the region both negatively and positively. The present study can also help in predicting the future aspects and impacts of the changes in agro-climate indices based on past trends.

【 授权许可】

Unknown