Rainfall variability on climate changes in Eastern Province in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Rainfall extremes have adverse impacts on the society and environment of Sri Lanka. The objective of this paper is to seek evidence spatiotemporal trends for rainfall variability on climate change in Eastern Province of Sri Lanka by analyzing long-term monthly data of rainfall received during the four rainy seasons - i.e. the Northeast monsoon, the first inter-monsoon and the second inter-monsoon during the period 1980-2010, from meteorological stations of the Department of Meteorology. Five stations of Eastern Province have observed either flooding in rapid sequence in recent years. Some studies attribute such extreme events to rainfall variability on climate changed induced by global warming. However, there is a dearth of climatological studies addressing the spatio-temporal trends in rainfall over Sri Lanka in support of such attribution. Using daily rainfall data collected at the 5 stations from Eastern Province of the Department of Meteorology, It interprets rainfall trends using different GIS techniques, so that the practical implications of rainfall variability on climate change in recent decades are clearly identifiable. The study finds that the number of rainy days has declined at all the rainfall stations except for the Trincomalee station.