Spatio-Temporal Rainfall Variability and Concentration over Sri Lanka

Abstract

Changes in precipitation patterns significantly affect flood and drought hazard management and water resources at local to regional scales. Therefore, the main motivation behind this paper is to examine the spatial and temporal rainfall variability over Sri Lanka by Standardized Rainfall Anomaly Index (SRAI) and Precipitation Concentration Index (PCI) from 1990 to 2019. The Mann–Kendall (MK) trend test and Sen’s slope (SS) were utilized to assess the trend in the precipitation concentration based on PCI. The Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolation method was incorporated to measure spatial distribution. Precipitation variability analysis showed that seasonal variations are more than those of annual variations. In addition, wet, normal, and dry years were identified over Sri Lanka using SRAI. The maximum SRAI (2.27) was observed for the year 2014 for the last 30 years (1990–2019), which shows the extremely wet year of Sri Lanka. The annual and seasonal PCI analysis showed moderate to irregular rainfall distribution except for the Jaffna and Ratnapura areas (annual scale-positive changes in Katugastota for 21.39% and Wellawaya for 17.6%; seasonal scale-Vavuniya for 33.64%, Trincomalee for 31.26%, and Batticaloa for 18.79% in SWMS). The MK test, SS-test, and percent change analyses reveal that rainfall distribution and concentration change do not show a significant positive or negative change in rainfall pattern in Sri Lanka, despite a few areas which experienced significant positive changes. Therefore, this study suggests that the rainfall in Sri Lanka follows the normal trend of precipitation with variations observed both annually and seasonally.