A study of precipitation changes from 1990 to 2020 in the Leh district of Ladakh using Innovative Trend Analysis

Abstract

Understanding the variability in climatic parameters, specifically the change in precipitation of cold arid desert environments is necessary because these regions are facing the disastrous weather extremes such as water shortages, cloud bursts and flash floods. Utilizing the data daily gridded datasets (0.25×0.25) that we obtained from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD). we employed the innovative trend analysis (ITA) framework to identify the precipitation change and the magnitudes of the trend within the dataset of the Leh district of Ladakh. We also employed the percent bias (PBIAS) to understand the variation in percentage in both annual and seasonal changes in precipitation. The non-parametric Modified Mann–Kendall (MK) test and Sen's slope estimator (Q) were utilized to ascertain the results significance. we found a negative trend in annual precipitation at -7.9 mm per annum, with a considerable decline in all seasons. Particularly, the spring season showed the most significant decrease (-3.48 mm), followed by winter (-4.09 mm), autumn (-1.90 mm), and summer seasons (-0.66 mm). The winter-spring timeframe contributed largely to the overall decline of precipitation. Since the communities in the region are dependent on winter precipitation (snowfall) for water availability, the results highlight the significance of comprehending temporal precipitation trend for sustainable use of water resources in the region. Insights from the present study can guide future initiatives aimed at mitigating the implications of changing precipitation on rural livelihoods and other sensitive ecosystems in the Himalayan region.