U.S. Scientists: Wet And Dry Spells up Drought, Flood Risks in India

The team looked specifically at rainfall during the months of July and August, which is the peak of the South Asian summer monsoon. The analysis focused on central India, which is the core of the monsoon region and has high population densities.

The team analysed the Indian monsoon data using statistical tools that account for so-called spatial and temporal relationships, which are typically ignored in "classical" or "off-the-shelf" statistical tools that were originally designed for use in the fields of biology, medicine and agriculture.

Such "spatial-temporal dependencies" are important when studying temperature, rainfall and other geophysical phenomena that can change over a daily scale, said Bala Rajaratnam, assistant professor of statistics and of environmental Earth system science. For example, if it rains today, there's a higher chance that it’ll rain tomorrow because a sto-rm system is already in place.

When the team members analysed the Indian monsoon data using statistical methods, they discovered that although the average total rainfall during the monsoon season has declined, the variability of rainfall during the peak monsoon months has increased.

The researchers observed increases in the intensity of wet spells and frequency of dry spells. "The statistical techniques show these changes are unlikely to happen purely by chance," Singh added.

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