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Abstract
Spatial and temporal variability of rainfall in Bangladesh has been studied in this paper from thirty-five years
(1969-2003) of rainfall data recorded at 24 rain gauges distributed over the country. Long-term annual average rainfall,
coefficient of variation of annual rainfall, precipitation concentration and aridity indices at each station have been com-
puted and then interpolated using kriging method within a geographic information system to show the temporal and
spatial variability of rainfall. Mann-Kendall test has been used to analyze the trend in rainfall data in different recording
stations and the Sen’s slope method has been used to determine the magnitude of change. A moderate variation in in-
ter-annual rainfall and high variation in intra-annual rainfall in Bangladesh have been observed. Non-significant positive
trend of annual, monsoon and pre-monsoon rainfall, and a negative trend in winter rainfall are found in Bangladesh.
Spatial distribution of rainfall trends shows that rainfall is increasing in the coastal zone and northern Bangladesh, and
decreasing in the central part of the country. A declining trend of precipitation concentration is also observed in most
of the stations. These results may be a first indication of the precipitation response to global warming – a hypothesis
which needs to be further investigated by means of climate model projections.
Key words: Aridity, rainfall trend analysis, precipitation concentration index, climate change, GIS
period 1969-2003 has been analyzed. 88°01'E to 92°41'E longitude. Except the hilly south-
Several studies have been carried out on temporal east, most of the country is a low-lying plain land. Three
variability of rainfall in Bangladesh (Ahmed, 1989; distinct seasons can be recognized in Bangladesh from
Ahmed and Karmaker, 1993; Ahmed, 1994; Ahmed et climatic point of view: (i) the dry winter season from
al., 1996, Hussain and Sultana, 1996; Kripalni et al., November to February, (ii) the pre-monsoon hot summ-
1996; Rahman et al., 1997; Ahmed and Kim, 2003). er season from March to May, and (iii) the rainy mon-
Ahmed and Karmakar (1993) studied the variability of soon season which lasts from June to October (Rashid,
the arrival and withdrawal dates of summer monsoon 1991). Analysis of temperature data for the time period
in Bangladesh, Ahmed (1994) studied the variability 1969-2003 shows that the average temperature of the
of summer monsoon and its relation with the monsoon country ranges from 7.2°C to 12.8°C in winter and 23.9
onset dates, Ahmed et al. (1996) showed the relation- to 31.1°C in summer. The average relative humidity for
ship between the annual rainfall and the ENSO, the whole year ranges from 70.5% to 78.1% with a max-
Rahman et al. (1997) studied the trend of summer mon- imum in September and a minimum in March (Banglapedia,
soon rainfall in Bangladesh, Ahmed and Kim (2003) 2003). About 78% rainfall in Bangladesh occurs in
investigated the patterns of daily rainfall in Bangladesh monsoon, caused by weak tropical depressions that are
during the summer monsoon. All the studies were car- brought from the Bay of Bengal into Bangladesh by the
ried out to show the seasonal and temporal pattern of wet monsoon winds.
rainfall in Bangladesh. However, no studies have been
carried out so far on spatial distribution of temporal 3. Data and Methodology
rainfall characteristics of Bangladesh. The main ob-
jectives of this paper are to show the spatial patterns of Daily recorded rainfall data at 24 rainfall measuring
inter-annual as well as intra-annual variation of rainfall stations during the period 1969–2003 has been used
over Bangladesh during the time period 1969–2003. in the present study. The location of rainfall measuring
Aridity assessment using De Martonne’s (De Martonne, stations is shown in Fig. 1. The homogeneity of the pre-
1926) and Thornthwait’s (Thornthwaite, 1931) methods cipitation records are analyzed by calculating the von
has been carried out for climate zoning of Bangladesh. Neumann ratio (Von Neumann, 1941; Suhaila et al.,
Trend analysis has been carried out to show the long- 2008) and the Buishand range test (Buishand, 1982).
term change in annual, monsoon, pre-monsoon and win- The data sets of all stations which have been used in the
ter precipitation over Bangladesh as well as in each cli- present study are found homogeneous.
mate zone. Mann-Kendall test has been used to analyze Different statistical characteristics of rainfall like
the trends in rainfall data in different recording stations mean rainfall over the year or different seasons, coefficients
and the Sen’s slope method (Sen, 1968) has been used of inter-annual rainfall variation, precipitation concen-
to determine the magnitude of change. Spatial dis- tration index (PCI), coefficient of variation of PCI are
tribution, temporal variation and trend of Precipitation calculated for all the stations. The spatial distributions
Concentration Index (PCI) have also been assessed. of these rainfall properties as well as trends of rainfall
GIS has been used for the development of historic rain- and PCI are mapped to analyze the spatio-temporal pat-
fall database, and development of raster maps of rainfall tern of rainfall over Bangladesh. Methods used for the
properties. processing of rainfall data to find the spatial and tempo-
ral trends and their mapping are discussed below.
2. Climate of Bangladesh
a. Rainfall characteristics analysis
2
Bangladesh, occupies an area of 143,998 km , cli-
matically belongs to sub-tropical regions where mon- Precipitation Concentration Index (PCI) proposed
soon weather prevails throughout the year. Geographically, by Oliver (1980) has been used to define temporal as-
it extends from 20°34'N to 26°38'N latitude and from pects of the rainfall distribution within a year. PCI is
31 August 2009 Shamsuddin Shahid and Osman Salleh Khairulmain 377
b. Aridity indices
∑p 2
i
(1) where P is the monthly precipitation in inches, T is the
PCI = 100 × i =1
P2 temperature in °F, and n is the months(=12).
In Mann-Kendall (MK) test the data are evaluated database using both spatial and temporal descriptions
as an ordered time series. Each data value is compared (Goodall et al., 2004).
to all subsequent data values in order to calculate the Geostatistical analysis tool of ArcGIS 9.0 (ESRI,
Mann-Kendall statistic. The probability associated with 2003) has been used for the preparation of raster map
Mann-Kendall statistic is then computed to statistically from point data using kriging interpolation method.
quantify the significance of the trend. Details of Mann- Kriging is a stochastic interpolation method (Isaaks and
Kendall test can be obtained in Sneyers (1992). Srivastava, 1989), which is widely recognized as stand-
Some trends may not be evaluated to be statistically ard approach for surface interpolation based on scalar
significant while they might be of practical interest measurements at different points. Study showed that
(Yue and Hashino, 2003; Basistha et al., 2007). Even Kriging gives better global predictions than other meth-
if climate change component is present, it may not be ods such inverse distance or weighted inverse distance
detected by statistical tests at a satisfactory significance techniques (van Beers and Kleijnen, 2004). Therefore,
level (Radziejewski and Kundzewicz, 2004). In the kriging is used in this study for the interpolation of point
present study, linear trend analysis is also carried out data to prepare the raster maps of various rainfall
and the magnitude of trend is estimated by Sen’s Slope parameters. Kriging is an optimal surface interpolation
method (Sen, 1968). Sen’s Slope method gives a robust method based on spatially dependent variance, which
estimation of trend (Yue et al., 2002). Sen's method cal- is generally expressed as a semi-variogram. Surface in-
culates the slope as a change in measurement per change terpolation using kriging depends on the selected semi-
in time. Sen's estimator of slope is simply given by the variogram model and the semi-variogram must be fit-
median slope. Details of Sen’s slope method can be ted with a mathematical function or model. Depending
found in Sen (1968). on the shape of semi-variograms, spherical and Guassian
models are used in the present study for their fitting.
d. Mapping using GIS Spherical and Gaussian models are bounded variogram
functions. The spherical model employs a progressively
For mapping of spatial characteristics of rainfall, decreasing spatial autocorrelation for the fitting of data.
mean annual rainfall, rainfall concentration index, their On the other hand Gaussian model uses the maximum
variation coefficients and trends are calculated for each likelihood approach for this purpose.
station. GIS is used for the development of historic rain-
fall database and calculation of rainfall characteristics 4. Results and Discussion
at each rain gauge station. Raster maps of rainfall char-
acteristics are prepared from point data using kriging Precipitation climatology over Bangladesh or the
interpolation method. mean of annual precipitation for the period 1969–
Historical rainfall database within a GIS is devel- 2003 is shown in Fig. 2a. Rainfall in Bangladesh varies
oped using the concept proposed by Goodall et al. from 1527 mm in the west to 4197 mm in the east. The
(2004). In the present study, a data model consists of gradient of rainfall from west to east is approximately
-1
one spatial component called Rainfall and one temporal 7 mm km . The monthly distribution of rainfall over
component called TimeSeries is developed. The spatial the country is shown by a graph in Fig. 2b. The left verti-
component contains feature classes relevant to that cal axis of the graph represents rainfall in millimeter
component. For example, Rainfall component con- and the right vertical axis represents .the rainfall as a
tains the RainGaugePoint feature class. Every feature percentage of annual total rainfall. The graph shows
within RainGaugePoint class is assigned a unique that the rainfall is very much seasonal in Bangladesh,
identifier. This identifier is used to relate features and more than 89% of rainfall occurs during May to October.
objects internal to the geodatabase. Therefore, the tem- The main mechanism of the rainfall in Bangladesh
poral component is linked to the spatial components during the summer monsoon season is caused by trop-
through the Feature ID. This allows one to query the ical depressions known as monsoon depression in the
31 August 2009 Shamsuddin Shahid and Osman Salleh Khairulmain 379
(a)
(b)
Fig. 2. (a) Spatial variation of mean annual rainfall over Bangladesh; (b) Monthly distribution of rainfall computed from
35 years (1969-2003) rainfall data.
Bay of Bengal (Ahmed and Kim, 2003). The monsoon plateau increased the rainfall in northeast of Bangladesh.
depressions enter Bangladesh from the Bay of Bengal De Martonne’s aridity index and Thornthwait’s pre-
with south-to-north trajectory and then turn toward the cipitation effectiveness index maps of Bangladesh are
northwest and west being deflected by the Meghalaya shown in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b) respectively. The aridity
Plateau. As these depressions move farther and farther maps reveal three climate zones in Bangladesh viz.
inland, their moisture content decreases, resulting in moist sub-humid, humid and wet. The climate of
decreasing rainfall toward the northwest and west of Bangladesh is mostly humid type. The northeastern
Bangladesh (Ahmed and Kim, 2003). On the other side of the country belongs to wet climate and the central
hand, the additional uplifting effect of the Meghalaya western part of the country belongs to moist sub-humid
380 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
(a)
(b)
Fig. 3. Dryness map of Bangladesh obtained by (a) De Martonne and (b) Thornwait models.
climate. Low rainfall and high variation between winter dex values obtained by De Martonne and Thornthwaite
and summer temperature is the characteristics of moist methods are 20.89 and 64.04 respectively in the north-
sub-humid zone of Bangladesh. Mean annual rainfall western side of this zone. As the dryness index values
in this zone is less than 2000 mm and the mean temper- in northwestern Bangladesh is close to that of a ‘dry
ature varies between 20°C in winter and 32°C in zone’, the climate of this region of Bangladesh is termed
summer. In summer, some of the hottest days experi- as ‘dry climate’. The total annual potential evapotranspi-
ence a temperature of about 45°C or even more and in ration in this part of Bangladesh is also lower than or
winter it falls to about 5°C in some places of this zone equal to annual rainfall in some years. High rainfall and
(Banglapedia, 2003). Therefore, the region experi- low variation between winter and summer temperature
ences the two extremities that clearly contrast with the is the characteristics of humid zone of Bangladesh.
climatic condition of rest of the country. The lowest in- Mean annual rainfall in this zone varies between 2000
31 August 2009 Shamsuddin Shahid and Osman Salleh Khairulmain 381
Trend analysis of rainfall at each station is also car- stations show decrease of monsoon rainfall over the
ried out to study the spatial variation of rainfall trends study period. Positive change in pre-monsoon rainfall
in Bangladesh. The obtained result is given in Table 1. is observed at most of the stations of Bangladesh.
Out of 24 stations, significant change of annual rainfall However, significant positive change is observed only
is observed in five stations. Among them four stations at six stations. Change in winter rainfall is negligible
show positive change of rainfall and one station shows in most of the stations. Significant change is observed
negative change of rainfall. Among the rest nineteen only is two stations.
stations, eleven stations show positive change of rain- The spatial distribution of annual, monsoon, pre-
fall and eight stations show negative change of rainfall. monsoon and winter rainfall trend over the country are
Statistically significant change of monsoon rainfall is shown in Figs. 7(a), 7(b), 7(c) and 7(d) respectively.
observed in seven stations in Bangladesh. Positive Plus (+) signs in the figures indicates an increase of rain-
change is observed at four stations and negative change fall, minus signs (-) means a decrease of rainfall and zero
is observed at three stations. Out of 24 stations, eleven (0) means no or negligible change of rainfall during the
stations show increase of monsoon rainfall and thirteen time period 1969-2003. The signs in white color denote
31 August 2009 Shamsuddin Shahid and Osman Salleh Khairulmain 383
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Fig. 5. Trend of (a) annual; (b) monsoon; (c) pre-monsoon; and (d) winter rainfall of Bangladesh during 1969-2003.
384 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Fig. 7. Spatial distribution of (a) annual; (b) monsoon; (c) pre-monsoon; and (d) winter rainfall trend over Bangladesh
during 1969-2003.
386 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
5. Summary
Fig. 9. Trend of average PCI in sub-humid zone of Bangladesh shows a decrease of rainfall concentration at 95% level
of confidence.
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