ANALYSIS OF RAINFALL PATTERN AND TEMPERATURE VARIATIONS IN THREE REGIONS OF SULTANATE OF OMAN

Rainfall and temperature are important parameters that determine the climatic condition of a region andis a growing concern in the current situation. Growing industrialization and increasing use of fossil fuels are putting pressure and effecting the regional and global temperatures that are subsequently influencing the overall precipitation levels. GCC and Arab countries are mostly dominated by dry climate and hot winds for most part of the year with little or no rainfall in most regions. In Middle east, specifically GCC countries economy depends on oil and gas production, processing, and exports, and these resources are used for electricity generation across all the six countries. This practice invariably is releasing more of greenhouse gases coupled with industrial emissions annually from industrialized zones. Among the six GCC nations, Oman has the second largest land area next to Saudi Arabia and has significant quantities of oil and gas resources and limited ground water resources. Scarcity of ground water poses serious problems for farming and potable water that cannot be supported by scanty or less rainfall annually. In absence of considerable data on rainfall pattern and temperature deviations, this paper is focused to highlight the rainfall scenario over temperature changes by studying the rainfall patterns over three designated regions for a certain duration. In Oman rainfall patterns and temperatures are stimulated by the weather changes and mostly by heavy industrialization in the recent past. Precipitation data and temperature profiles are two dependent parameters that are analyzed to achieve the objectives of the study. Regression analysis is performed to understand the trend in the rainfall pattern with changes in temperature in the three designated regions of Oman using the data of 14 years. The study revealed significant outcomes indicating distinct relationship between rainfall and temperature. Changing ambient temperatures in each region has shown to influence the rainfall pattern differently in Muscat region contrasting the Maseira and Sur region of the study area. The trend in rainfall pattern with one unit temperature variations are not uniform across all the three study regions that show apparent variations due the differently contributing factors such as topography, wind speed, direction, mountain ranges, relative humidity, and proximity to sea etc. that would govern the precipitation rates.