Impact of Climate Change on Rainfall Pattern in Upper Kumaon Himalaya Region

Abstract Every single aspect of environment is affected by climate change. Change in rainfall pattern is an immense important research area in climate-change based study. Rainfall pattern has direct impacts on food production and frequencies natural disasters (landslide, cloudburst, flood, drought etc.). Consequently, that appropriate and systemic consideration since it distresses the most of the human life. Situation in Himalayan region is worst. High altitude, less agricultural area, harsh climate with high fragility makes mountain region more vulnerable in term of climate change. The objective of this study is to identify yearly, seasonal, and monthly rainfall trends in the Upper Kumaon region (UKR). Long-term gridded daily rainfall data (1950–2018) were used. Rainfall data was processed and analyzed for a period of 68 years (1950–2018) at four places (four in each Kumaon division) in the surrounding area of Almora, Bageshwar, Pithoragarh, and Champawat. The regression analysis (parametric) method and variability analysis were used to examine historical trends in daily rainfall. The rising and falling trends in rainfall, as well as anomalies, have been studied using regression.The result shows that rainfall demonstrate statistically significant changes occurred in last 34 years. Rainfall variability is higher in low altitude region than high altitude region of Upper Kumaon region.