Climate diagnosis is the attempt to understand the characteristics of the climate and to delineate the key mechanisms. Such understanding leads to the potential to predict climate. We have estimated long-term trends and investigated the impact of two of the principal modes of inter-annual variability, namely, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole. Future work shall include studies of other regional factors such as Eurasian snow cover and volcanic activity on Sri Lanka’s climate.
Activity | Objectives | Partners | Status | Next Steps |
Climate Variability Diagnostics | Conduct definitive studies on the climate modes affecting Sri Lanka to lead to best possible predictions. | IRI, Frontier Research System for Global Change | Diagnostics of ENSO and Indian Ocean Dipole mature now. Work needed on Indian ocean warming, atmospheric pollution impacts and volcanic impacts | Complete publications of current work, Work on decadal variability and trends, Work on pollution, volcanic activity and radiation impac |
Climate Change Diagnostics | Assess climate change in the observational record. Assess quality of climate change projections for Sri Lanka from IPCC. | Department of Meteorology | Climate change diagnostics on mean, maximum and minimum temperature and diurnal range and rainfall completed. Internal Reports prepared. | Publications in Journals |
Hydrological Variability and Change | Assess modes of hydrological variability. Develop hydrological predictions using statistical techniques. | Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka | Analysis on ENSO dependence of Kelani and Mahaweli streamflow published. Decadal changes in hydro-climatology published. | Publish paper on Indian Ocean impacts. Develop statistical prediction scheme for streamflow |
Global climate change has a spatially varying character and precise understanding of change in different regions is needed. Our estimates of changing temperature show modest differences in estimates of the warming trend for most stations for the period from 1960-2001 but larger differences for earlier periods. There is a trend of 2.6 oC/100 years of warming trend in annual average maximum temperature and 1.7 oC/100 years for annual average minimum temperature from 1961-2000. These warming trends vary both seasonally and regionally.
Climate
Nov 2004: with Upamala Tennakoon and Manjula Siriwardhana, Climate Change Assessments for Sri Lanka from Quality Evaluated Data, International Conference on Sustainable Water Resources Management in the Changing Environment of the Monsoon Region, United Nations University, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Advisories