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Rainfall Measurements Throughout Northeast India: AD 1871-2008
Reference
Jain, S.K., Kumar, V. and Saharia, M. 2013. Analysis of rainfall and temperature trends in northeast India. International Journal of Climatology 33: 968-978.

Background
Climate alarmists unabashedly claim that, over the past century or so, the earth experienced a warming that was unprecedented over the past millennium or more; and they suggest that a warming of this magnitude should significantly impact global precipitation, increasing it in general, but decreasing it in certain specific places. Hence, it is of great interest to learn what occurred in this regard over the Little Ice Age-to-Current Warm Period transition in various parts of the world.

What was done
Noting that several investigators have concluded that both the trend and magnitude of warming over the Indian subcontinent throughout the past century "is broadly consistent with the global trend and magnitude (Pant and Kumar, 1997; Arora et al., 2005; Dash et al., 2007)," the authors go on to search for concurrent changes in precipitation that may have occurred in northeast India over the period 1871-2008 within four subdivisions of Northeast India based on data obtained at 30 different rainfall stations.

What was learned
Jain et al. report that, overall, no clear pattern for rainfall for the Northeast Region of India has emerged, either spatially or temporally; and they thus say that "one can conclude that the rainfall series for this region for the period 1871-2008 does not have any significant trend." In addition, they report that "several studies relating to [the] changing pattern of rainfall over India observed that there is no clear trend of increase or decrease in average rainfall over the [entire] country," citing the studies of Mooley and Parthasarathy (1984), Thapliyal and Kulshrestha (1991), Lal (2001) and Kumar et al. (2010).

What it means
In a sizeable region of the world (India) that warmed in a way that was "broadly consistent with the global trend and magnitude" over the Little Ice Age-to-Current Warm Period transition, there was no sign of any significant change in precipitation that might otherwise have been attributed to global warming, which finding stands in stark contrast to the climate-model-based mantra of the world's climate alarmists.

References
Arora, M., Goel, N.K. and Singh, P. 2005. Evaluation of temperature trends over India. Hydrological Sciences Journal 50: 81-93.

Dash, S.K., Jenamani, R.K., Kalsi, S.R. and Panda, S.K. 2007. Some evidence of climate change in twentieth-century India. Climatic Change 85: 299-321.

Kumar, V., Jain, S.K. and Singh, Y. 2010. Analysis of long-term rainfall trends in India. Hydrological Sciences Journal 55: 484-496.

Lal, M. 2001. Climatic change - implications for India's water resources. Journal of Indian Water Resource Society 21: 101-119.

Mooley, D.A. and Parthasarthy, B. 1984. Fluctuations of all India summer monsoon rainfall during 1871-1978. Climatic Change 6: 287-301.

Pant, G.B. and Kumar, K.R. 1997. Climates of South Asia. Wiley, Chichester, United Kingdom.

Thapliyal, V. and Kulshrestha, S.M. 1991. Decadal changes and trends over India. Mausam 42: 333-338.

Reviewed 21 August 2013