Accounting magnitude, spatial extent and duration for ranking of extreme precipitation events in Indian Western Himalayan

Abstract:

Extreme weather and climate events rarely occur at a single location (station) rather over a wider impacted area. In fact, the magnitude, spatial extent and duration, in general, have potential to indicate whether the particular event is local, regional or global. In this study, we rank the extreme precipitations events in the Indian Western Himalayan by accounting the precipitation magnitude, spatial extent and duration. The results reveal that multi day ranking scheme helps in better understanding the different air circulation patterns/precipitation bands causing precipitation over an area at different times. The single day event happening for four days was insignificant, if studied independently, but turns out be hazardous if studied through multi day ranking scheme. We observe that the ranking method apart from identifying such long temporal scales extremes also gives an idea that at what time scale it will be of high impact. Our result reveal that even in many cases, socioeconomic impacts are not just a result of short and intense events but also accumulated moderate events for a longer period which then become significant.

Keywords: Extreme Events, Multi-day ranking, Indian Western Himalayan