The Wet and Dry Spells across India during 1951–2007

Characteristics of wet spells (WSs) and intervening dry spells (DSs) are extremely useful for water-related sectors. The information takes on greater significance in the wake of global climate change and climate-change scenario projections. The features of 40 parameters of the rainfall time distribution as well as their extremes have been studied for two wet and dry spells for 19 subregions across India using gridded daily rainfall available on 1° latitude × 1° longitude spatial resolution for the period 1951–2007. In a low-frequency-mode, intra-annual rainfall variation, WS (DS) is identified as a “continuous period with daily rainfall equal to or greater than (less than) daily mean rainfall (DMR) of climatological monsoon period over the area of interest.” The DMR shows significant spatial variation from 2.6 mm day−1 over the extreme southeast peninsula (ESEP) to 20.2 mm day−1 over the southern-central west coast (SCWC). Climatologically, the number of WSs (DSs) decreases from 11 (10) over the ...