Warming Magnitude, its Variability and Change of Thermal Regime on the Southern
Slope of the Central Himalayas, Nepal
Dr. Dambaru Ballab Kattel
Department of Meteorology, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad
Abstract:
Insufficient long-term in situ observations and complex topographic conditions pose major
problems in quantifying the magnitude of climatic trends in mountainous regions such as Nepal.
Presented here is three decades (1980–2009) of trends in data of annual maximum, minimum and
average temperature from 56 stations on the southern slope of the central Himalayas. The
stations are located at elevations between 70 m and 4000 m above sea level and with varied
topography. The spatial distribution of temperature trends shows higher variability in the study
region. About 87.5% station records the temperature trend that has been increasing. Statistically
significant warming varies from 0.04 to 0.25oC/yr for the maximum, 0.04 to 0.11oC/yr for
minimum and 0.03 to 0.14oC/yr for the average temperature. The warming is predominant in
most of the urban places. The higher magnitude of warming showed in the hilly region and
mostly dominated by the maximum temperature (25% magnitude >0.06oC/yr). In addition, the
warming is more pronounced in the eastern part of the country than western part.The average
warming rate over the region is 0.03oC/yr during the past three decades. The CUSUM analysis
forall stations temperature data shows that the thermal regime has been shifting since 1995 in the
hilly and since 1998 in the middle and high mountain regions. Moreover, unlike Tibet (China),
the temperature trends on the southern slope of the central Himalayas do not show the altitudinal
dependency.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Kattel received his PhD from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2012 under
the various fellowship programmes (CSC, ITPCAS, CAS, TPE and UCAS). He is currently
working as a foreign assistant professor in the Department of Meteorology, COMSATS Institute
of Information Technology, CIIT, Islamabad, Pakistan since September 2013. Dr. Kattel has also
worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Cartography, Technical University, Dresden,
Germany, under the fellowship of the German Research Foundation (DFG). He also served as a
scientific officer at the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, Government of Nepal. He
has delivered numerous lectures as an invited speaker at many conferences, workshops, and at
meetings in the South and Central Asia and Europe. There are 8 articles including one in worlds
highly prestigious International Journal Nature (Climate Change) in his credit. The hydroclimatic interactions, its mechanisms and controls are his topic of current research interest.
Date: 06 Nov, 2014
Time: 3:30 PM - 4:30PM
Venue: Department of Meteorology, Old Bio-Sciences Campus
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad
Contact: muhammad_latif@comsats.edu.pk