Trends and Variability of Climatic Parameters in Vadodara District

Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather around longer-term average conditions. The impact of climate change on the various meteorological parameters has received a great deal of attention by scholars worldwide .The means for detecting climate trends and variability are time series analysis based on data sets e.g. Temperature, precipitation, wind speed and relative humidity. In this study the focus is on detecting trends in mean monthly maximum temperature, mean monthly minimum temperature, mean monthly precipitation, mean monthly wind speed and mean monthly relative humidity for the Vadodara district in the state of Gujarat. For this study, Mann-Kendall test was run at 5% significance level on time series data for Vadodara district for the period of thirty seven years strting from 1969 to 2005. Mann-Kendall test is carried out using software XLSTAT to analyze trend in given data. The resultant Mann- Kendall test statistic (Zs) indicates how strong the trend is and whether it is increasing or decreasing. A high positive value (Zs) statistic indicates an increasing trend while a low negative value indicates a decreasing trend in the time series of random variables. In this study maximum temperature shows highest increase in December while highest decrease in July .The minimum temperature has shown an increasing trend in all the months and a significant increase is observed in the month of March. The relative humidity is showing an increasing trend in all the months except the months of June, July and August. The wind speed is decreasing for all the months and a significant decrease is observed in June. Also, Sen's slope estimator has been used along with Mann Kendall test statistic (Zs). Pattern of trends as discussed in the results leads to a conclusion that climate in showing changes in all climatological parameters in vadodara district. Citation : Apurva. J. Patel, Water Resources Engineering and Management Institute, Faculty of Tech & Engg, The Maharaja Sayajirao; Dr. T. M. V. Suryanarayana ,Water Resources Engineering and Management Institute, Faculty of Tech & Engg, The Maharaja Sayajirao; Dr. Falguni Parekh ,Water Resources Engineering and Management Institute, Faculty of Tech & Engg, The Maharaja Sayajirao; Jaynesh Jadav ,. "Trends and Variability of Climatic Parameters in Vadodara District." Global Research and Development Journal For Engineering : 121 - 127.