Extreme rainfall indices and its impact on rice productivity--A case study over sub-humid climatic environment

Frequent occurrences of extreme rainfall events create severe threat to agricultural production. This is one of the most significant consequences of global warming due to increase in greenhouse gases. A precise understanding of frequency and magnitude of these events and its influence on agricultural productivity can extensively help in policy decisions and planning agricultural as well as water management operations. This study has analyzed observed trends in extreme rainfall indices during monsoon months as well as seasonally at four stations located over different agro-ecological zones of Bihar, namely Samastipur (zone-I), Madhepura (zone-II), Sabour (zone-IIIA) and Patna (zone-IIIB). Mann-Kendall nonparametric test was employed for detection of trends and the slopes of the trend lines were determined using the method of least square linear fitting. Since rice is the important crop in this part of the region, the vulnerability of extreme rainfall indices on productivity also analysed using simple correlations. All the sites show an increasing trend of number of days with rainfall 10.0 cm or more (very heavy precipitation event) during monsoon season. Sabour shows a significant increasing trend of 0.4 and 0.6 day/decade, respectively during monsoon and annually. During September, occurrence of heavy precipitation events over Madhepura recorded a significant positive trend of 0.4 day/decade. Highly significant magnitudes of increasing trends were noticed for Madhepura (46.6 mm/decade) and Sabour (27.5 mm/decade) for occurrence of highest five-day total precipitation during monsoon season. The results show statistically significant positive trends of number of days with rainfall > R2.5 cm for all the study sites during August. All the sites, the magnitude of highest 1-day and 5-days maximum rainfall is showing increasing trend. Increasing trends of fraction of rainfall due to extremely wet days is also showing increasing trend in all the sites. The rice productivity showed 10th degree polynomial technological trend in all the sites and steady increase in all the sites except Samastipur. The correlation between extreme rainfall indices during monsoon season and productivity anomaly index indicate that almost all the extreme rainfall indices contribute positively to rice productivity except P95pTOT and R99pTOT over Sabour and R7.5 cm over Patna. If we assume the observed increasing trends in different extreme rainfall indices will continue, as estimated by the global circulation models, the chances of occurrence of intense rainfall events in near future will also increase proportionally and efforts should be made to prepare detailed site specific--at least at district level--disastrous management plan especially to reduce impact of extreme rainfall event on agricultural production system under changing climatic scenarios.