Application of Turning Point Test to Precipitation Time Series over Seonath River Basin, India

Abstract

Precipitation is a very important parameter to estimate climate variability. This paper presents an application of Turning point test to seasonal and annual precipitation data for a period of 30 years over Seonath Basin, a major sub-basin of Mahanadi River Basin. The objective of the application of Turning point test is to catch the randomness of the precipitation time series over the study area. The randomness of precipitation data is checked in general before the trend analysis.The precipitation time series possessing more randomness may give misleading results for trend analysis. Considering this issue, the monthly data was collected for 39 stations, which were categorized into 4 seasons of the year i.e. winter, pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon. The results reveal for almost all the stations showing insignificant randomness for monsoon, post-monsoon and annual precipitation time series. However, in the winter and pre-monsoon seasons, about half of the stations are showing significant randomness.