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ABSTRACT There is little dispute that global surface air temperature has increased and the anthropogenic-induced global warming is likely to play an important role in the management of water resources of a river basin. Therefore, this study was undertaken for Godavari River basin, a large southern peninsular river basin in India. After removing the effect of significant lag-1 serial correlation by pre-whitening procedure, the Mann-Kendall ( MK) test was employed to investigate trends in maximum temperature ( Tmax), minimum temperature ( Tmin) and mean temperature ( Tmean) at 35 stations in the basin. At seasonal (monthly) time scales, a majority of the stations exhibited no trends in Tmean, Tmax and Tmin in any of the four seasons (12 months) with the exception of post-monsoon (December) for Tmax and monsoon (July and September) for Tmin. About 60% (45%) of the stations exhibited increasing trends in Tmax ( Tmin) in different durations: the month of December and post-monsoon season (the months of July and September and monsoon season) indicating the presence of an element of seasonal cycle in temperature over the Godavari basin. Results of tests of spatial and temporal homogeneity of trends by the Van Belle and Hughes method showed that trends in temperature over the Godavari basin were not homogeneous for different months or at different stations. In spite of the warmer climate in the basin, the evaporation (Epan) has been found to decrease significantly over the Godavari basin. Strong decreases in wind speed and increases in relative humidity may have actually caused the Epan decreases over the southern peninsular region of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climatic variability and rise in temperature are considered as the key determinants to the transmission of malaria. In the present study, the trends in the cases of malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax were investigated by using the nonparametric Mann-Kendall test after removing the effect of significant lag-1 serial correlation from the time series of cases of malaria incidence by pre-whitening in annual, seasonal, and monthly time scales at Bikaner, located in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, in northwest India. Multi-collinearity within the datasets under consideration was investigated by means of correlation matrix, the Bartlett sphericity test, and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy, subsequent to which it was removed by using principal component analysis. Finally, artificial neural network models were employed to predict cases of malaria incidence caused by P. falciparum and P. vivax at various scales. During the last 34 years from 1975 to 2008, P. falciparum malaria incidence cases have been found to increase significantly corresponding to monthly (April and September) and seasonal (monsoon) time scales over Bikaner. On the other hand, no significant trends were observed in P. vivax malaria cases at Bikaner. Concomitant increases in P. falciparum cases of malaria incidence and observed temperature increases at Bikaner hint that P. falciparum malaria may have grown significantly under the warming climate of the Thar Desert. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]