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Abstract

India is a highly diverse topographic region globally, and the recent humanitarian development has led to perturbations in the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) circulations. These perturbations in ISM have led to the advent of frequent and persistent extremes over the Indian subcontinent. In the recent period, the strong east–west gradient of precipitation changes, particularly over northern India has been identified. Furthermore, a notable decrease is noticed over the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) and vice versa over Northwest India and the Western Ghats. This study is in continuation of the changes in precipitation patterns over these regions in the observed and projected period. Global Climate Models (GCMs) from the suite of multi-model ensemble mean of CMIP6 have been used for studying the changing pattern of precipitation in the projected period. The results highlight that in the present as well as in the projected climate the northwestern (IGP) region will receive more (less) precipitation along with intensified (less intensified) rainfall during both time slices. Moreover, the precipitation concentration index (PCI), an indicator of the temporal precipitation distribution was assessed to highlight the changes in the precipitation concentration over the region during the monsoon. In this study, the changes in the low-level monsoon circulation along with moisture loading are responsible for such changes in all the episodes during extreme rainfall. This study is an initiative to indicate the pace of changes in the climate during the monsoons over the Indo-Gangetic belt which is one of the most fertile regions of the globe.