Climate Issues of Nepal - Report Example

PROBLEM SOLVING 2 Name Institution Instructor Date Introduction Nepal is primarily a country involved in agrarian where more than half of its population depend on agriculture as their basic occupation. Agriculture in this country contributes significantly to the economic development where it makes up close to 38 per cent of the GDP annually. Just approximately 28 per cent of the total land covered by the country is utilized for agriculture and only 25 per cent of the agricultural land is equipped with irrigation facility. The idea of relying on precipitation to carry out agricultural practices may result in a drought situation or negative impacts to the national economy. The most noteworthy element of the yearly distribution cycle of the monsoon is its regular nature. However, this element of the monsoon allows for the susceptibility of agriculture even to the slight changes in the rainfall cycle that occurs annually (Dhungel and Pun, 2008). Nepal is prone to various induced recurrent climatic risks such as drought, floods, hailstorms, cold waves as well as glacial lake outburst floods among others. Marginalised and poor groups in the population living in the rural localities are the ones who suffer most from such natural disasters. 1. Rainfall 1.1 features of the annual and seasonal rainfalls and their overall distributions Seasonal Rainfall analysis The performance of seasonal rainfall analysis involved determining the sum of the corresponding average monthly rainfall. This was obtained from the data set provided for 25 sites in Nepal in 2012. Precipitation in both semi-arid and arid areas is because of convective mechanisms of cloud that produces short duration storms as well as high intensity. However, frontal types of rains are also evident in winter seasons. The occurrence of precipitation as well as a relatively low intensity of rainfall has a higher likelihood of representing a large portion of annual rainfall (Singh, Singh and Shrestha, 2005). The statistical features that are associated with short duration, convective and high intensity rainfall are influenced by the kind of locations considered. The analysis of data for short duration rainfall indicates the existence of a considerably stable relationship that governs the intensity features of this nature of rainfall. Previous studies carried out in Nepal have indicated that approximately half of the rainfall happens at intensities that are more than 30 mm/hour whereas 25 to 35 per cent of rainfall happens at intensities that are more than 45 mm/hour. This kind of relationship suggests the presence of independence between long-term average rainfall and the given locality. Overall average distribution of annual and seasonal rainfall for 25 sites in Nepal Annual / Seasonal rainfall Annual Rain Winter Rain Pre Monsoon Rain Monsoon Rain Post Monsoon Rain Average Rainfall (mm) 1849.872 60.852 232.18 1469.552 87.284 Total Rainfall (mm) 46246.8 1521.3 5804.5 36738.8 2182.1 Graphical summary of Annual and Seasonal rainfall distribution for the 25 sites in Nepal Annual rainfall variability The management and planning of rainfall harvesting in both arid and semiarid sites in Nepal are faced with several difficulties, which result from low rainfalls experienced in comparison to the inherent variability degree related to it. In sites of temperate climate, the annual rainfall standard deviation has been maintained between 15 to 20 per cent in 15 out of 25 years with the amounts of annual rainfall falling between 70 to 120 per cent of the mean. The overall amount of rainfall experienced in the course of the cropping season is normally is normally designed to a given occurrence probability (Dhungel and Pun, 2008). For instance, when a design rainfall having a probability of 65 per cent is selected, the implication is that this value will exceeded or attained in three years (Potts and Higgins, 2004). 1.2 hypotheses for a set of t-tests to compare mean seasonal rainfalls Hypotheses: Trends in mean seasonal rainfalls have been occurring in several sites in Nepal in the year 2011 and the amplification of these trends is done with increase in elevation due to environmental exposure. Secondly is the chain of mountainous region for sites located in the western parts of Nepal that experience varying patterns that are dependent on basic synoptic regime in every individual site. With the use of interpolated data that is of high quality, the formulated hypothesis can be mentioned with regard to the 25 sites in consideration. 1.3 Hypothesis tests The process of hypotheses t-test in excel involved the performance of an F-test to find out the whether variances of the seasonal rainfalls are equal. However, it was determined that it was not the case. This was followed by the actual t-test data analysis, which is as indicated below T-Test: mean seasonal rainfalls for winter and pre monsoon rains   60.7 93.1 Mean 60.85833333 237.975 Variance 726.1094928 12015.33 Observations 24 24 Hypothesized Mean Difference 0 df 26 t Stat -7.686979672 P(T Read More