ABSTRACT
The onset, retreat and the length of growing season in the north‐eastern region of Sri Lanka were investigated using daily rainfall data for the period 1961 to 2000. Data from three weather ...stations situated in the coastal belt in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka (Jaffna, Trincomalee and Batticaloa) that receive rainfall predominantly from the northeast monsoon were selected for this study. A method based on cumulative rainy days was utilized in the determination of the onset and retreat dates. It is shown that there is substantial interannual variability in onset and retreat dates. The mean onset and retreat dates fall on the standard week 38.3 ± 2.7 and 53.0 ± 2.9, respectively. The mean duration of the growing season is 14.7 ± 3.4 weeks. The retreat date and thus the length of growing season could be extended by 2 weeks if the probability of occurrence of rain during the onset is favourable for the retreat. The results indicate that there has been no significant trend in the onset and retreat dates during the last 40 years in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. The onset date and the length of growing season are weakly correlated with early onset dates leading to longer growing seasons. The study concludes that rainy days could be used successfully to determine the mean rainfall onset and retreat dates in the dry zone of Sri Lanka.
In this study, we present an assessment of the Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM) 50 km simulations forced by the sea surface temperature and sea ice concentration of six global climate models ...(GCMs) (ACCESS1-0, CCSM4, GFDL-CM3, NorESM, MPI-ESM and CNRM-CM5) from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) over South Asia, centred on Sri Lanka. The model simulations were compared with the data provided by the Asian Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration towards Evaluation of Water Resource (APHRODITE) project and ERA-Interim from the European Centre for Medium range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) over a broad region centred on Sri Lanka. This broad region includes South Asia and northern Indian Ocean. Statistical measures such as pattern correlations, mean biases and root mean square errors were calculated separately for the four seasons. Results based on statistical tests indicate that the current CCAM simulations capture the spatial patterns of 10 m wind speed, mean sea level pressure, temperature and rainfall over a broad region over South Asia fairly well. The annual cycles of temperature and rainfall were also compared against observations over the northern and southern regions of Sri Lanka by taking the field average of each model and the observed data. The characteristics of the observed annual variations of rainfall and temperature over the smaller domains are not very well captured by the CCAM simulations. There are differences in the magnitudes of the temperature and rainfall in the six member CCAM simulations. Comparatively, the two CCAM simulations CNRM-CM5 and GFDL-CM3 show slightly better agreement over the Sri Lankan region.
The hypothesis that the wet and dry patterns of daily precipitation observed in Colombo can be modeled by a first order Markov chain model was tested using daily rainfall data for a 60-year period ...(1941–2000). The probability of a day being wet or dry was defined with respect to the status of the previous day. Probabilities were assumed to be stationary within a given month. Except for isolated single events, the model is shown to describe the observed sequence of wet and dry spells satisfactorily depending on the season. The accuracy of modeling wet spells is high compared to dry spells. When the model-predicted mean length of wet spells for each month was compared with the estimated values from the data set, a reasonable agreement between the model prediction and estimation is seen (within ±0.1). In general, the data show a higher disagreement for the months having longer dry spells. The mean annual duration of wet spells is 2.6 days while the mean annual duration of dry spells is 3.8 days. It is shown that the model can be used to explore the return periods of long wet and dry spells. We conclude from the study that the Markov chain of order 1 is adequate to describe wet and dry patterns of weather in Colombo.
The accuracy of reconstructing missing daily temperature extremes in the Jaffna climatological station, situated in the northern part of the dry zone of Sri Lanka, is presented. The adopted method ...utilizes standard departures of daily maximum and minimum temperature values at four neighbouring stations, Mannar, Anuradhapura, Puttalam and Trincomalee to estimate the standard departures of daily maximum and minimum temperatures at the target station, Jaffna. The daily maximum and minimum temperatures from 1966 to 1980 (15 years) were used to test the validity of the method. The accuracy of the estimation is higher for daily maximum temperature compared to daily minimum temperature. About 95% of the estimated daily maximum temperatures are within ±1.5 °C of the observed values. For daily minimum temperature, the percentage is about 92. By calculating the standard deviation of the difference in estimated and observed values, we have shown that the error in estimating the daily maximum and minimum temperatures is ±0.7 and ±0.9 °C, respectively. To obtain the best accuracy when estimating the missing daily temperature extremes, it is important to include Mannar which is the nearest station to the target station, Jaffna. We conclude from the analysis that the method can be applied successfully to reconstruct the missing daily temperature extremes in Jaffna where no data is available due to frequent disruptions caused by civil unrests and hostilities in the region during the period, 1984 to 2000.
In this study, an analysis of century scale climate trends in the central highlands of Sri Lanka is presented. Monthly rainfall and temperature records of the period 1869–2006 from five ...climatological stations were analyzed. The trend is calculated by the least square regression analysis and the significance of the observed trend is estimated using the Mann–Kendall statistic. The results clearly show that there is a statistically significant decrease in annual rainfall in the western slopes of the central highlands. Throughout the last century, the annual reduction of rainfall in Nuwara Eliya which is at an altitude of 1895 m was 5.2 mm/year. The decrease is largely due to the reduction in southwest monsoon rainfall which contributes to 75% of the total reduction. No significant change was observed on the eastern side of the central highlands which receives rainfall predominantly from the northeast monsoons. The mean annual temperature in the mountainous region shows a uniform increasing trend which is in line with the 100-year global temperature increase of 0.8 ± 0.2
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C. Kandy, which is at an altitude of 477 m and closely linked with the rainfall climatology of Nuwara Eliya, showed no significant change in the mean annual temperature. If the current trend continues, in another 100 years, western and eastern slopes of central highlands will receive the same amount of rainfall from the southwest monsoon and the northeast monsoon which will have far reaching consequences for Sri Lanka’s economy and the ecology of the hill country.
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