Version 1
: Received: 21 February 2019 / Approved: 1 April 2019 / Online: 3 April 2019 (00:00:00 CEST)
Version 2
: Received: 21 February 2019 / Approved: 1 April 2019 / Online: 9 July 2019 (00:00:00 CEST)
Version 3
: Received: 21 February 2019 / Approved: 1 April 2019 / Online: 14 August 2019 (00:00:00 CEST)
Chand, M.B.; Bhattarai, B.C.; Pradhananga, N.S.; Baral, P. Trend Analysis of Temperature Data for the Narayani River Basin, Nepal. Sci2021, 3, 1.
Chand, M.B.; Bhattarai, B.C.; Pradhananga, N.S.; Baral, P. Trend Analysis of Temperature Data for the Narayani River Basin, Nepal. Sci 2021, 3, 1.
Chand, M.B.; Bhattarai, B.C.; Pradhananga, N.S.; Baral, P. Trend Analysis of Temperature Data for the Narayani River Basin, Nepal. Sci2021, 3, 1.
Chand, M.B.; Bhattarai, B.C.; Pradhananga, N.S.; Baral, P. Trend Analysis of Temperature Data for the Narayani River Basin, Nepal. Sci 2021, 3, 1.
Abstract
Study of spatiotemporal dynamics of temperature is vital to assess changes in climate, especially in the Himalayan region where livelihoods of billions of people living downstream depends on water coming from the melting of snow and glacier. To this end, temperature trend analysis is carried out in Narayani river basin, a major river basin of Nepal characterized by three climatic regions: tropical, subtropical and alpine. Temperature data from six stations located within the basin are analyzed. The elevation of these stations ranges from 460 to 3800 m asl. and the time period of available temperature data ranges from 1960–2015. Multiple regression and empirical mode decomposition (EMD) methods are applied to fill in the missing data. Annual as well as seasonal trends are analyzed and Mann-Kendall test is employed for testing the statistical significance of detected trend. Results indicate significant cooling trends before 1970s, and warming trends after 1970s in the majority of the stations. The warming trends range from 0.028 C per year to 0.035 C per year with a mean increasing trend of 0.03 C per year after 1971. Seasonal trends show highest warming trends in monsoon season followed by winter, pre-monsoon, and post-monsoon season. However, difference in warming rates between different seasons isn’t sufficiently large. An average temperature lapse rate of −0.006 C per m with the steepest value (−0.0064 C per m) in pre-monsoon season and least negative (−0.0052 C per m) in winter season is observed for this basin. A comparative analysis of the gap-filled data with freely available global climate data sets shows reasonable correlation thus confirming the suitability of the gap filling methods.
Keywords
climate change; temperature trend; Himalaya; river basin; Nepal
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Comments (0)
We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.