LAUSR

The study and investigation of precipitation trends is quite important for a country like India, whose economy is largely based on agriculture, which in turn is significantly affected by water availability. Almost 83% of water is used in agriculture, 12% is consumed by industries and a mere 5% is used for domestic purposes. In the present study, the long term trend based on rainfall data of 115 years (1901–2015) was analyzed at annual and seasonal (pre-monsoon/summer, monsoon, post-monsoon/winter) scale. After checking for cross-correlation in the data, Mann-Kendall test (MK) was applied, and in order to identify the trends, Sen’s slope estimator was used and the overall percent change for the rainfall over the study area was calculated. To interpolate the spatial pattern, an inverse distance weighted interpolation method (IDW) was used using ArcGIS 10.2.2. The analysis showed a significant decrease in the trend of rainfall for annual and seasonal series during the entire time period.