Global Climate Pattern Behind Hydrological Extremes in Central India

The concurrent influence of large-scale, coupled oceanic–atmospheric circulation patterns was established to have an effect on hydrologic variability across the world. El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) are, in particular, important for Indian hydroclimatology. However, it is now established that rather than just a few well-known teleconnection patterns, a Global Climate Pattern (GCP) comprising of a global field of several climate anomalies are responsible for above-normal and below-normal precipitation events over entire India. The existence of a GCP for hydrological extremes in an even smaller spatial scale is illustrated in this study. The central part of India, consisting of the contiguous homogeneous meteorological subdivisions—West Madhya Pradesh, East Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, and Chattisgarh (hereinafter ‘central India’), is selected as the study area. Hydrological extremes (this study focus on precipitation) in the study area are identified in terms of the Standardized Precipitation Anomaly Index (SPAI), which is suitable for quantifying extreme events in a monsoon-dominated climatology. After investigation of the global anomaly fields of five climate variables, a set of 19 specific zones of climate anomalies from across the world are found to constitute the GCP for the hydrological extremes in the study region. The identified GCP is further utilized in a Support Vector Machine (SVM) model to investigate the potential of the GCP in foreseeing dry and wet extremes over the study area.