Long-Term Time Series Trend Analysis of Climatic Variable for Jaisalmer District in Thar Desert, Western Rajasthan, India, Using Statistical Approaches

The varying trends of temperature in Jaisalmer (located in Thar Desert) for a time period of 70 years have been analyzed. Jaisalmer is the third-largest and one of the hottest districts of India, where temperature variation plays a significant role. The present study reviews the temperature variation and its trend analysis based on gridded data (.grd files) obtained from the portal of the Indian Metrological Department Pune. Daily mean temperature (T_mean) is obtained from average of daily maximum (T_max) and minimum (T_min) temperatures. Interpolation maps have been plotted using QGIS for mean of monthly mean temperature for the T_mean and found that the northeastern part of the Jaisalmer district faces higher temperatures in summer as compared to other parts of the district. Sen’s slope estimator and modified Mann–Kendall test have been used for trend analysis. It has been observed that the annual temperature for T_max and T_mean shows significantly upward trend (p < 0.05) during the study period at all locations, whereas T_min shows insignificantly upward trend at most of the locations. The month of February shows a higher value of percentage change for T_min, and June shows a lower percentage change for all three parameters at all locations. Such type of study has not been conducted earlier in this area, so it will prove an important and useful asset for the policymakers to take appropriate decisions.