Recent trends of extreme weather events in Sri Lanka

The impacts of climate change of a particular region depend on several factors such as geographical settings, weather factors and socio-economic situation. Therefore, it is important to keep timely records on changing weather parameters across all geographical regions in a country to implement appropriate mitigation and adaptation interventions accordingly. This study was carried out using daily rainfall and temperature time series for more than 30 years ranging from 1961 to 1984 up to 2019. Possible climatological trends were analyzed for 17 agro-meteorological observation stations scattered throughout the island. Eight temperature indices and six rainfall indices were analyzed using ClimPACT2 software to determine the extreme climatic events of time series data. Results have revealed that annual mean daily temperature, maximum and minimum temperatures have shown a significant increasing trend in all three climatic zones. Decreasing of cold days and cold nights and increasing of warm days and warm nights were also significant in Dry Zone (DZ). Annual total rainfall, consecutive dry days and consecutive wet days have not shown a significant increasing or decreasing trend. However, heavy rainfall events and simple daily intensity index indicated an apparent increasing trend in the DZ. Since DZ is the major agricultural region of the country, increasing trends of ambient temperature and heavy rainfall event there in likely to influence the agricultural production of the country in a negative manner.