Title: The historical trend in temperature of a tropical river basin in Kerala, India

Authors: P.P. Nikhil Raj; P.A. Azeez

Addresses: Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India ' Department of Environmental Science and Management, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli – 620024, India

Abstract: While the concern about climate change has been significant in academia for a long time, the first assessment of the IPCC (1990) and then the Kyoto protocol (1997) provided a substantial impetus to study climate change worldwide. Local climatic variations are manifestations of global climate changes jointly with local features. In this study, we examine the daily temperature data of the Bharathapuzha river basin for 1969-2005, collected from the India Meteorological Department, Pune, for its historical trend. Mann-Kendall rank correlation statistics were used to investigate the basin's variations in yearly, monthly and seasonal temperatures. It showed that there is a hike in the annual temperature. Significant hikes in monsoons (southwest and northeast) and winter temperatures were also observed. Although the pre-monsoon temperature showed a hike, it was not statistically significant.

Keywords: climate change; temperature trend; wavelet analysis; Mann-Kendall statistics; Bharathapuzha river basin; Kerala; Western Ghats.

DOI: 10.1504/IJW.2022.130825

International Journal of Water, 2022 Vol.15 No.1, pp.39 - 52

Accepted: 20 Dec 2022
Published online: 11 May 2023 *

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