Temperature Variability Analysis of Gulmarg and Srinagar, Kashmir Valley, J&K, India

Climate is a complex and chaotic system having non-linear links between its component variables. Study on temperature trends at macro level may be used to assess the climate variability of a region over the period of time as it is the main component of the climate system. For trend analysis, non-parametric Mann-Kendall test, which is an important tool to find out the existence and magnitude of any statistically significant trend in the climatic data, has been employed in the present study. Another index called Sen Slope has been used to quantify the magnitude of such trend. Temperature data of 39 years (1970-2009) were used for two selected stations over different altitudinal zones of Kashmir valley, viz; Srinagar (1600 metres) and Gulmarg (2644 metres). Both the maximum and minimum temperatures were found to be rising. The overall increase in temperature for Gulmarg is found to be much more than that of Srinagar.