Faculty Publications
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Item Large-scale atmospheric teleconnections and spatiotemporal variability of extreme rainfall indices across India(Elsevier B.V., 2024) Vinod, D.; Mahesha, A.Identifying trends in hydrometeorological time series during extreme weather events and their interactions with large-scale atmospheric teleconnections is crucial for climate change research. This study evaluates 14 precipitation-based indices recommended by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) across seven climatic zones of India using gridded daily rainfall data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for 120 years (1902–2021) utilised. Trend analysis was carried out using the Mann-Kendall (MK) test, Theil-slope Sen's estimator, Innovative Trend Analysis (ITA), and other statistical tools. Change point detection is established using the Pettitte test and Cumulative Sum algorithm. The relationships between large-scale atmospheric teleconnections and ETCCDI indices are also found, and Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) models are developed between them. The results show significant increasing trends in extreme rainfall indices in India's Ladakh region, located in the arid desert-cold climatic zone. The annual, Southwest Monsoon (SW-Monsoon), Northeast Monsoon (NE-Monsoon), and summer rainfall trends were positive, while winter rainfall had a negative trend across most climatic zones. Significant associations between large-scale atmospheric teleconnections, including Arctic Oscillation (AO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA), Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), SST of Niño 3.4 region, Oceanic Niño Index (ONI), and Dipole Mode Index (IOD) and ETCCDI indices were established across multiple climatic zones. Using MLR analysis, this study attempts to establish, for the first time, the relationship between teleconnections and ETCCDI indices across India. Extreme rainfall indices are influenced by climate change during the SW-Monsoon across most of the climatic zones of India. During the previous El Niño event (2014–2016), average annual rainfall decreased by 19.5%, SW-Monsoon rainfall decreased by 25.2%, and NE-Monsoon rainfall decreased by 64.1% in India. The findings may provide valuable insights into mitigation strategies to sustain the adverse effects of extreme weather conditions and enhance climate resilience. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.Item Evaluation of GPM IMERG satellite precipitation for rainfall–runoff modelling in Great Britain(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2024) Gautam, J.; O, S.; Vinod, D.; Mahesha, A.Reliable hydrological simulations require accurate precipitation data. However, data uncertainties due to the indirect nature of satellite estimates can propagate through hydrological models and lead to simulation errors. This study assesses the accuracy of Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) products, comparing them directly with ground-based precipitation data and evaluating their performance in rainfall–runoff modelling across Great Britain. Three IMERG V06 products (IMERG-Early, IMERG-Late, and IMERG-Final) are examined. Utilizing the simple water balance model (SWBM), the analysis covers 250 basins, revealing that the SWBM performs well in over 50% of the basins. Runoff estimations show that European Observation (E-OBS) ground-based data yield the highest Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) score (0.91), followed by IMERG-Final (0.85), IMERG-Late (0.82), and IMERG-Early (0.73). The findings underscore IMERG’s utility in hydrological modelling for ungauged or poorly gauged basins. © 2024 IAHS.Item Fortnightly Standardized Precipitation Index trend analysis for drought characterization in India(Springer, 2024) Benny, B.; Vinod, D.; Mahesha, A.Climate change is a major concern, as it profoundly affects many facets of our lives. It has brought about several issues, including declining water supply, reduced agricultural yields, increased drought occurrences, and increased heat waves. Amidst these challenges, the influence of short-term drought events on plant growth and irrigation schedule emerges as a critical concern. However, despite these evident consequences, a nuanced understanding of the intricate relationship between the severity and duration of short-period drought/deficit events still needs to be explored. This paper analyses fortnightly water deficit periods over different regions of India, which would be more relevant to re-scheduling the irrigation events than monthly or longer duration in preventing crops from reaching the permanent wilting point. Hence, this work considers analyzing 15-day Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) trends and drought characteristics using conventional methods and Innovative Trend Analysis (ITA) techniques. The analysis uses gridded rainfall data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), which has a spatial resolution of 0.250-E and 0.250-N. The data spans the period from 1970 to 2021. The ITA and Mann Kendall (MK) displayed nearly identical areas of increasing and decreasing trends, but ITA effectively identified significant trends. While MK and Modified Mann Kendall (MMK) could only indicate significant trends for 12.94%, 9.57%, and 9.9% of grid points for SPI, drought severity, and duration, respectively, ITA was able to identify significant trends at 44.31%, 10.9%, and 10.1% on an annual scale. The ITA method effectively identified the significant trends and magnitudes of fortnightly SPI and drought characteristics. The Tropical monsoon (Am), Tropical savannah (Aw), Arid desert hot (BWh), Arid steppe hot (BSh), and Temperate dry winter warm summer (Cwb) climatic zones have shown a significant increase in annual drought severity. Similarly, a significant increase in monsoon drought severity is observed across several states, including Gujarat and Mizoram, impacting diverse geographic extents. The present study can help policymakers and water resource managers decide on water allocation, irrigation, and crop management practices. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2024.Item Downscaling algorithms for CMIP6 GCM daily rainfall over India(Springer, 2024) Raj, R.; Vinod, D.; Mahesha, A.The global climate models (GCMs) are sophisticated tools for determining how the climate system will respond. However, the output of GCMs has a coarse resolution, which is unsuitable for basin-level modelling. Global climate models need to be downscaled at a local/basin scale to determine the impacts of climate change on hydrological responses. The present study attempted to evaluate how effectively various large-scale predictors could reproduce local-scale rain in 35 different locations in India using artificial neural networks (ANN), change-factors (CF), K-nearest neighbour (KNN), and multiple linear regression (MLR). The selection of predictors is made based on the correlation value. As potential predictors, air temperature, geo-potential height, wind velocity component, and relative humidity at specific mean sea-level pressure are selected. The comparison of four different downscaling methods concerning the reproduction of various statistics such as mean, standard deviation at chosen locations, quantile–quantile plots, cumulative distribution function, and kernel density estimation of the PDFs of daily rainfall for selected stations is examined. The CF approach outperforms the other methods at almost all sites (R2 = 0.92–0.99, RMSE = 1.37–28.88 mm, and NSE = –16.55–0.99). This also closely resembles the probability distribution pattern of IMD data. © Indian Academy of Sciences 2024.Item Modeling nonstationary intensity-duration-frequency curves for urban areas of India under changing climate(Elsevier B.V., 2024) Vinod, D.; Mahesha, A.Enhancing stormwater drainage systems is paramount amid evolving climate dynamics, necessitating robust design and continual upgrades to address changing environmental conditions. The present work constructs the nonstationary Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curves for prominent urban areas of India. It develops 2313 nonstationary Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) models in annual and seasonal timeframes by integrating the influence of local and global climate-informed covariates, including time covariates. The work involves analyzing 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, 24, 36, and 48 hourly maximum rainfall series with return periods of 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, and 100 years. Among the 16 urban areas examined, there's a significant shift from stationary to nonstationary extreme rainfall intensities, marked by a 38.7% increase in shorter duration series with a 5-year return period in New Delhi and Visakhapatnam. AMO, DMI, GTA, and LTA in New Delhi play significant roles. Similarly, in Visakhapatnam, SST in Niño 3.4 and DMI are significant covariates influencing nonstationarity. Recently, in the 2023 monsoon, the 25-year flood wreaked havoc in New Delhi, Rajkot, Surat, and Visakhapatnam. Generating nonstationary IDF curves for the annual and seasonal timeframes offers a comprehensive approach to stormwater design and infrastructure upgradation and effective adaptation strategies across sixteen Indian cities. © 2024 Elsevier B.V.Item Decadal trends and climatic influences on flash droughts and flash floods in Indian cities(Elsevier B.V., 2024) Archana, T.R.; Vinod, D.; Mahesha, A.Flash droughts/floods are extreme weather phenomena that are expected to become increasingly frequent and severe with the changing climate. Flash droughts result from a rapid decline in soil moisture, while flash floods occur due to a high extreme rainfall intensity over a short duration. This study analyzes the ERA5 reanalysis data (hourly temperature, soil moisture, and precipitation) from 1992 to 2022 to assess flash drought/flood attribute variations across fourteen Indian cities. Flash drought events are identified based on specific conditions using the obtained Soil Moisture Index (SMI) values. At the same time, we propose a novel approach to attribute flash floods by setting thresholds for precipitation and soil moisture. This study examines the frequency and trends of flash drought and flood events across India's various Köppen-Geiger climatic zones from 1992 to 2022. Jaipur and Dehradun show a statistically significant decrease in flash drought events with magnitudes of ?0.0833 events/year and ?0.0769 events/year, respectively. Conversely, Hyderabad exhibits a highly significant increase in flash flood events with a magnitude of 1.1851 events/year. Similarly, Bengaluru, Varanasi, and Vishakhapatnam also show substantial increases in flash flood events. These findings underscore the impact of climate change on flash droughts/floods, highlighting the necessity for sustainable strategies. © 2024 Elsevier B.V.Item Spatial Dependence of Extreme Rainfall and Development of Intensity-Duration-Frequency Curves Using Max-Stable Process Models(American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2025) Vinod, D.; Mahesha, A.The effective management of flood risk and urban drainage design hinges on a comprehensive understanding and accurate modeling of extreme rainfall variations, particularly in vulnerable areas. The study proposes to model spatial extreme rainfall across various durations in the Ganga River basin of India using max-stable processes (MSP). Incorporating geographical covariates like longitude, latitude, and elevation, 28 surface response models were constructed for location and scale parameters, with linear variations in marginal parameters while keeping the shape parameter constant across space. Various max-stable characterizations were evaluated using the Takeuchi information criterion (TIC) value and likelihood ratio test statistics, including Brown-Resnick, Smith, Extremal-t, Schlatter, and Geometric-Gaussian models with different correlation functions. The findings showed that the Brown-Resnick model consistently simulated well for shorter extreme rainfall for 3, 4, and 6-h and 36-h durations. The extremal coefficients revealed higher dependency between closer locations for most durations. In comparison with classical univariate extreme value theory (UEVT), the MSP exhibits a minimal overestimation in extreme rainfall intensity at New Delhi (by 13.6 mm/h) and Diamond Harbor (by 10.2 mm/h) stations for shorter durations, i.e., 2-h to 6-h range. Its estimations align within the uncertainty bounds of the identical and independent distribution (I.I.D) for longer durations. This suggests the importance of considering the strengths and limitations of M.S.P. and UEVT approaches for accurate rainfall intensity estimation, especially in flood risk management and urban drainage design. In data-sparse region/ungauged basins, where traditional methods like univariate UEVT may be limited due to the absence of observed rainfall data. The fitted max-stable processes MSP can serve as a valuable tool when relevant geographical covariates are known. © 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.Item Modeling non-stationary 1-hour extreme rainfall for Indian river basins under changing climate(Elsevier B.V., 2025) Vinod, D.; Mahesha, A.India's complex topography and the increasing influence of climate change have exacerbated the challenges of modeling 1-hour non-stationary extreme rainfall events. Prior studies have indicated rising intensities of such events, particularly in coastal and urban areas. This study addresses these issues by developing 155 basin-specific non-stationary surface response models, incorporating geographical, climatic, and temporal covariates. Using 13 Max-Stable Process (MSP) characterizations, extreme rainfall variability across 11 major river basins and three-time scales were effectively modeled. The Brown-Resnick, Geometric-Gaussian, and Extremal-t models demonstrated varying effectiveness across regions. The findings emphasize the critical role of region-specific analysis in water resource management and disaster preparedness, where the high temporal resolution datasets are limited for the point process-based models. The global processes and regional climate change are found to predominantly influence 1-hour extreme rainfall across the majority of river basins in India. © 2025 Elsevier B.V.Item Characterizing extreme rainfall using Max-Stable Processes under changing climate in India(Elsevier B.V., 2025) Vinod, D.; Mahesha, A.Climate change has markedly intensified the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events globally over recent decades. The present investigation introduces a novel approach to modeling Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curves for major river basins in India using max-stable processes (MSPs). In contrast to earlier studies that mainly dealt with univariate extreme value theory and point-based IDF curves, this work uses a variety of MSP characterizations, such as Brown-Resnick, Schlather, Geometric Gaussian, and Extremal-t, to capture the spatial dependencies and non-stationary characteristics of extreme rainfall. This comprehensive two-stage modeling approach incorporates geographical covariates to capture spatial variation in extreme rainfall, followed by additional climate-informed covariates. One hundred fifty-six surface response models are analyzed across nine hourly extreme rainfall durations over 11 river basins. The Brown-Resnick process effectively captured spatiotemporal dependencies across all durations in the annual timeframe, while the Geometric Gaussian process also demonstrated strong performance. During the Indian Monsoon season, distinct covariates such as the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA) significantly influenced extreme rainfall patterns. The analysis reveals that the Brahmaputra basin consistently exhibits the highest short-duration extreme rainfall, while the Indus basin shows the lowest. Long-term projections indicate alarming trends, with potential short-duration extreme rainfall reaching 338.9 mm for a 100-year return period in the Godavari basin. The findings highlight the importance of updating IDF relationships in climate variability, providing insights that could lead to disaster preparedness and resilience planning for vulnerable communities across India. © 2025 Elsevier B.V.Item Multi-criteria decision-making and machine learning-based CMIP6 general circulation model ensemble for climate projections in a tropical river basin in India(Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2025) Kumar, G.P.; Vinod, D.; Dwarakish, G.S.; Mahesha, A.General circulation models (GCMs) are vital for accurate climate prediction and informing strategic water resource planning. The investigation explores the performance of five machine learning (ML) algorithms for ensembling the GCMs for top-5 and least-5 ranked models in multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) in addition to 28 GCMs applicable to a tropical river basin in India and the performance of their ensemble using statistical metrics. The gridded datasets from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) are used as observed data. From the statistical metrics, an entire 28 GCMs ensemble showed superiority over top-5 and least-5 ranked ensembles for three meteorological variables. The random forest (RF) algorithm consistently demonstrated high accuracy and reliability in ensembling the GCMs for the three meteorological variables, followed by support vector machine (SVM) and multiple linear regression (MLR). By implementing the proposed approach, researchers can minimize biases, enable resource-efficient modeling, and deliver practical insights through robust and reliable climate projections. These results highlight the importance of thoughtful ensemble design, advocating using multi-model ensembles (MMEs) in comprehensive climate studies to ensure accurate predictions across diverse climate indices. The findings provide valuable insights into local climate conditions, supporting ecosystem management and informing policy decisions. © The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences 2025.