Climate change analysis of India: Exploring a regional picture
Student name: Ms Richa Sharma
Guide: Dr Ashoke Basistha
Year of completion: 2010
Host Organisation: TERI University
Abstract: India has a large growing population, which is tied to its natural resource base, hence it is more vulnerable to climate change. Climate change is a major threat to the human society because of its adverse impacts on the ecosystems, biodiversity, water resources, agriculture, forests, economy, etc. The increasing or decreasing rainfall trends and temperature profiles prevailing over different areas in the country get masked when averaging is done over the nation. Regional and local analysis over such a large country holds great importance for the scientific community and the policy makers for efficient water resource management and for addressing climate change issues. Thus, awareness and understanding of all the processes at the regional level, that govern climate and climate change is the need of the hour. Thus, this work attempts to bring out patterns of trend over the subdivisions of India through analysis of long (1901-2002) annual rainfall and temperature records. The results show that annual rainfall has increasing trend in Punjab and Haryana and a decreasing trend in the Bihar, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand at 10% significance. Annual average, minimum and maximum temperatures have increasing trend at regional level all over India at 10% significance level indicating a shift towards a warmer climate.
Keywords: Climate change, Rainfall, Regional, Temperature, Time series analysis, Trend
