SECTION-2: LITERATURE REVIEW

SECTION 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction To arrive at a better justification regarding the selection of models, variables analysis techniques and the way the variables are related, it is relevant to, make a survey of related literatures. This very important area of research is well explored and a good number of works are made available. A few of such studies relating to this research are high along with the information about time, subject and their findings.

2.2 Review of the Literature and Current Studies

A number of comprehensive and through research works have so far been conducted on rainfall but people are still scrutinizing ins and outs of meteorological data (especially rainfall) from different vantage points.

So far we have concerned, the frontiersman of meteorological study about current context, William (1952) has studied the sequence of wet and dry spells for Rthamsted experimental station, Harpendeen studies for two five years periods 1938 tol942 and 1943 to!947, where it is shown that the frequency distributions of dry spells follow nearly a logarithmic series. Where as, the frequency distributions of wet spell do not follow a logarithmic series.

Strem (1980) has analyzed the daily rainfall data at Samaru, Nigeria during 1928 to 1978 and he has found that the first order Markov chain and gamma models have been used in agriculture. Stern et al. (1981) has examined the start of the rains in West Africa for period between 1934 to 1965. In this study, the start of the rain was defined as the first occurrence of a specified amount of rain within two successive days.

Stern et al (1982) have analyzed the daily rainfall data for Kano, Shilpur and Hydrabad, India for the period between 1916 to 1975 with a view to providing agronomically useful
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results by s direct method and a modeling approach. Tough the direct method, they have obtained the probability of an event like start, end etc. of the rains directly form the relative frequency of rainfall occurrences. Again, they have fitted the probability model for the dry spells, start, end and length of the growing season and the amount of rainfall through out the year. In modeling approach, they have obtained the probabilities of dry spells using the simple recurrence relations and the potential results have been related to agriculture. Gabriel (1959) derived an exact formula for the distribution of the number of wet days in a fixed period of time.

Eichmeier and Baten (1962) analyzed daily precipitation records for Michigan State University. A seasonal trend was found for the short period variation. Topil (1963) studied the variation of precipitation probability at Denver.

Gramzow and Henry (1972) showed the beginning of the rainfall of a rainy pentad for central America and tried to identify the causes of rain. - Islam (1980) has analyzed the probability distribution of seasonal rainfall data at Pabna station for the period 1902-1952. In this study, he has shown that the seasonal and monthly totals for the rainy season follow a normal distribution and he has suggested a log-transformation on both the amount of rainfall and the frequency of rainfall to the data. The gamma distribution is found to fit well to the monthly rainfall data in the nor'wester season.

Sinha (1989) has analyzed the daily, monthly, seasonal rainfall data of rainy season for five selected stations of Bangladesh for the period between 1966 and 1986 to identify the impact of rainfall on agriculture. He has observed that monthly rainfall amount during Aus and Aman periods follow Pearson type one model. Again, he has also found that under Geary statistic seasonal data follow a Gaussian model. On the basis of first order Markov model for daily rainfall occurrences he has found that the first planting dates for

Aus paddy are somewhat risky. The period between August 16 and September 1 has been identified as the most suitabloe data of start of the growing season for Aman paddy, Shinha and Paul (1992) have examined the pattern of rainfall for rainy season of Sylhet area, Bangladesh for the period between 1974 and 1984. Roy et al. (1990) have studied the trends of regional variations and periodicities of annual rainfall in Bangladesh for 32 years between 1947 and 1979 at 30 meteorological stations and they have

shown that the yearly rainfall amounts for most of the stations follow a normal distribution. Annual rainfall data for Rajshahi,

Ishwardi, Pabna and Khulna stations have shown positive trends while for Comilla station a year cycle for Mymensingh, Bogra, Khulna and Narayangonj whereas a 3-year cycle has been found in the two adjacent districts of Faridpur and Jessore.

Debsarma K.S (1992) has studied some generalized features and impact of the Southwest Monsoon over the sub-continent that presented at the seminar on "Asian Monsoons and its Fluctuations" organized by the Bangladesh Academy of Science (BAS).

Khan m.h and Debsarma (1992) have studied Climate change of Bangladesh (A Statistical Review) taking into account the data from 1984 to 1989 that presented at the "IOC/UNEP workshop on global warming and sea level rise in the South Asian seas region.

Islam, S.E.D. and Hossain, F.H (2000) fitted the probability of both dry and wet spell for all seasons in Bangladesh in six divisional stations on the basis of 50 years of rainfall data.