Abstract
Understanding the spatiotemporal variations of thunderstorm (TS) frequency over Bangladesh under the changing climate is of immense importance but remains a challenging task due to the lack of persistent and reliable weather data set. This study demonstrates a statistically significant increasing trend in the occurrence of monthly, seasonal, and annual TS frequencies except for decadal periods across Bangladesh during the past 6 decades. Further, land use influences and seasonal variabilities in convective available potential energy (CAPE) are also explored in various regions to understand the spatial variabilities among different parts in Bangladesh. The results show the highest occurrence of TS in monsoon and the lowest occurrence in the winter season. The results of Ward’s Hierarchical Cluster analysis (WHCA) illustrate four clusters for the whole country, where the higher TS frequency was observed in northeastern and northern regions and the lower in the southern part of Bangladesh due to the variation of CAPE and development of the low-pressure system. The occurrence of TS frequency maxima and lower coefficients of variation are found in the pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons. The variation coefficient of the winter season is high, while the pre-monsoon season is low. The results of Mann–Kendall (MK) and Spearman’s rho (SR) tests reveal the highest increase and decrease trends in M. Court and Tangail stations. The ARIMA model outcomes are consistent with the findings of MK and SR tests. Overall, this study reveals that elevated CAPE and climate warming may be reasoned of increasing the TS frequency over Bangladesh.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ahrens CD (2013) An introduction to weather, climate, and the environment. Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, Belmont
Akhter S, Eibek KU, Islam S, Islam ARMT, Chu R, Shen S (2019) Predicting spatiotemporal changes of channel morphology in the reach of Teesta River, Bangladesh using GIS and ARIMA modeling. Q Int 513:80–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2019.01.022
Alijani B (2012) Synoptic climatology, 5th edn. Samt Publications, Tehran
Allen JT, Karoly DJ (2014) A climatology of Australian severe thunderstorm environments 1979–2011: inter-annual variability and ENSO influence. Int J Climatol 34:81–97. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.3667
Araghi A, Adamowski J, Jagharg MR (2016) Detection of trends in days with thunderstorms in Iran over the past five decades. Atm Res. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2015.12.02
Box GEP, Jenkins GM (1976) Time series analysis: forecasting and control. Holden-Day, Boca Raton
Budnuka AC (2015) Statistical analysis of seasonal temperature variation and thunderstorm activity over Yola north-east Nigeria. Am J Educ Res 3:873–880
Buishand TA (1982) Some methods for testing the homogeneity of rainfall records. J Hydrol 58(1):11–27
Changnon SA (2001) Thunderstorm rainfall in the conterminous United States, B. Am Meteor Soc 82:1925–1940
Changnon SA, Changnon D (2001) Long-term fluctuations in thunderstorm activity in the United States. Clim Change 50:489–503
Dalal S, Lohar D, Sarkar S, Sadhukhan I, Debnath GC (2012) Organizational modes of squall-type mesoscale convective systems during premonsoon season over eastern India. Atmos Res 106:120–138
Das S (2010) Climatology of thunderstorms over the SAARC region. SMRC Rep 35:66
Das S, Mohanty UC, Tyagi A, Sikka DR, Joseph PV, Rathore LS, Habib A, Baidya SK, Sonar K, Sarkar A (2014) The SAARC STORM: a coordinated field experiment on severe thunderstorm observations and regional modeling over the South Asian region. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 95:603–617
Dee DP, Uppala SM, Simmons AJ et al (2011) The ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system. Q J Roy Meteor Soc 137:553–597. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.828
Dewan A, Hossain, M, Rahman, MM, Yamane, Y, Holle R (2017a) Lightning Fatalities in Bangladesh from 1990 through 2016. In: 97th american meteorological society (AMS) annual meeting, at: Tahoma 1 (Washington State Convention Center), Seattle, WA, USA
Dewan A, Ongee ET, Rahman MM et al (2017b) Spatial and temporal analysis of a 17-year lightning climatology over Bangladesh with LIS data. Theor Appl Climatol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-017-2278-3
Enno SE, Briede A, Valiukas D (2013) Climatology of thunderstorms in the Baltic countries, 1951–2000. Theor Appl Climatol 111:309–325
Farajzadeh M (2012) Climatological techniques, 4th edn. Samt Publications, Tehran
Ghavidel Y, Baghbanan P, Farajzadeh M (2017) The spatial analysis of thunderstorm hazard in Iran. Arab J Geos. 10:123. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-017-2902-7
Hans A (1986) A homogeneity test applied to precipitation data. Inter J Climatol 6(6):661–675
Hyndman D, Hyndman D (2009) Natural hazard and disasters, 2nd edn. Brooke/Cole, Cengage Learning, Boston, p 581
IMD (1944) Nor’wester of Bengal. Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) technical note no. 10
Islam ARMT, Shen S, Hu Z, Rahman MA (2017) Drought hazard evaluation in boro paddy cultivated areas of western bangladesh at current and future climate change conditions. Adv Meteorol. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/3514381
Islam ARMT, Shen S, Haque MA, Bodrud-Doza M, Maw KW, Habib MA (2018) Assessing groundwater quality and its sustainability in Joypurhat district of Bangladesh using GIS and multivariate statistical approaches. Environ Dev Sustain 20(5):1935–1959. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-017-9971-3
Karmakar S (2001) Climatology of thunderstorm days over Bangladesh during pre-monsoon season. Bangladesh J Sci Technol 3:103–112
Karmakar S, Alam M (2005) On the sensible, latent heat energy and potential energy of the troposphere over Dhaka before the occurrence of nor’westers in Bangladesh during the pre-monsoon season. Mausam 56:671–680
Karmakar S, Quadir DA (2014) Study on the potential temperatures of the troposphere associated with local severe storms and their distribution over Bangladesh and neighborhood during the pre-monsoon season. J Eng Sci 5:13–30
Kendall M (1975) Rank correlation methods, 4th edn. Charles Griffin, London
Kumar R (2014) Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part A: global and sectoral aspects. In: Field CB (ed) Contribution of working group II to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Kunkel KE et al (2013) Monitoring and understanding trends in extreme storms: state of knowledge. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 94:499–514
Kunz M, Sande J, Kottmeier CH (2009) Recent trends of thunderstorm and hailstorm frequency and their relation to atmospheric characteristics in southwest Germany. Int J Climatol 29(15):2283–2290
Li M, Chu R, Shen S, Islam ARMT (2018) Quantifying climatic impact on reference evapotranspiration trends in the Huai River Basin of Eastern China. Water 10(2):144
Loginov VF, Volchek AA, Shpoka IN (2010) Estimation of the role of various factors in the thunderstorm formation on the territory of Belarus. Russian Meteorol Hydrol 35:175–181
Mann H (1945) Nonparametric tests against trend. Econometrica 13:245–259
Mir H, Hussain A, Babar ZA (2006) Analysis of thunderstorms activity over Pakistan during (1961–2000). Pak J Meteorol 3:13–33
Ologunorisa TE, Chinago AB (2004) Annual thunderstorm fluctuations and trends in Nigeria. J Meteorol 29:39–44
Osuri KK, Nadimpalli R, Mohanty UC, Chen U, Rajeevan M, Niyogi D (2017) Improved prediction of severe thunderstorms over the Indian Monsoon region using high-resolution soil moisture and temperature initialization. Sci Rep 7:41377. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep41377
Pinto O, Pinto IRCA, Ferro MAS (2013) A study of the long-term variability of thunderstorm days in southeast Brazil. J Geophys Res 118:5231–5246
Rahman MS, Islam ARMT (2019) Are precipitation concentration and intensity changing in Bangladesh overtimes? Analysis of the possible causes of changes in precipitation systems. Sci Total Environ 690:370–387
Rahman MA, Yunsheng L, Sultana N (2017) Analysis and prediction of rainfall trends over Bangladesh using Mann-Kendall, Spearman’s rho tests and ARIMA model. Meteorol Atmos Phys 129(4):409–424. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-016-0479-4
Rahman SMM, Hossain SM, Jahan M (2019) Thunderstorms and lightning in Bangladesh. Bangladesh Med Res Counc Bull 45:1–2. https://doi.org/10.3329/bmrcb.v45i1.41801
Saha TR, Quadir DA (2016) Variability and trends of annual and seasonal thunderstorm frequency over Bangladesh. Inter J Climatol 36:4651–4666
Saha U, Maitra A, Midya SK et al (2014) Association of thunderstorm frequency with rainfall occurrences over an Indian urban metropolis. Atmos Res 138:240–252
Shahid S, Khairulmaini OS (2009) Spatio-temporal variability of rainfall over Bangladesh during the time period 1969–2003. APJAS 45(3):375–389
Siddik MA, Rahman M (2014) Trend analysis of maximum, minimum, and average temperatures in Bangladesh: 1961–2008. Theor Appl Climatol 116:721–730. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-014-1135-x
Siddiqui ZA, Rashid A (2008) Thunderstorm frequency over Pakistan. Pak J Meteorol 5:39–63
Singh O, Bhardwaj P (2017) Spatial and temporal variations in the frequency of thunderstorm days over India. Weather 99(99):1–7. https://doi.org/10.1002/wea.3080
Sneyers R (1990) On the statistical analysis of series of observations. World Meteorol Org 10:143–192
Sokol NJ, Rohli RV (2018) Land cover, lightning frequency, and turbulent fluxes over Southern Louisiana. Appl Geogr 90:1–8
Spearman C (1904) The proof and measurement of association between two things. Am J Psychol 5(1):72–101
Tinmaker MIR, Ali K (2012) Space time variation of lightning activity over northeast India. Meteorol Z 21(2):135–143
Tinmaker MIR, Aslam MY, Chate DM (2015) Lightning activity and its association with rainfall and convective available potential energy over Maharashtra, India. Nat Hazards 77:293–304
Tuomi TJ, Mäkelä A (2008) Thunderstorm climate of Finland 1998–2007. Geophysica 44:67–80
Tyagi A (2007) Thunderstorm climatology over Indian region. Mausam 12:189–212
Ullah S, You Q, Ullah W, Ali A (2018) Observed changes in precipitation in China Pakistan economic corridor during 1980–2016. Atmos Res 210(4):1–14
Yu Y, Li JI, Xie J et al (2016) Climatic characteristics of thunderstorm days and the influence of atmospheric environment in northwestern China. Nat Hazards 80:823–838. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-1999-9
Yue S, Pilon P, Phinney B, Cavadias G (2002) The influence of autocorrelation on the ability to detect trend in hydrological series. Hydrol Process 16:1807–1829
Zhang Q, Ni X, Zhang F (2017) Decreasing trend in severe weather occurrence over China during the past 50 years. Sci Rep 7:42310. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep42310
Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the Department of Disaster Management, Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur, Bangladesh, and to Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, China for different forms of support. We would like to acknowledge to Md. Jalal Uddin for preparing the convective available potential energy (CAPE) map for this study. We also acknowledge to Md. Uzzal Mia for preparing location map in this research. We acknowledge to the anonymous reviewers for improving the quality of the paper. The authors are also thankful to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), Dhaka, Bangladesh, for providing thunderstorm data set in this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Responsible Editor: A.-P. Dimri.
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Islam, A.R.M.T., Nafiuzzaman, M., Rifat, J. et al. Spatiotemporal variations of thunderstorm frequency and its prediction over Bangladesh. Meteorol Atmos Phys 132, 793–808 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-019-00720-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-019-00720-6