Impact of Climate Variability on the Rice Yield in Uttar Pradesh: an Agro-Climatic Zone Based Study

In the backdrop of the established fact that the climate and agricultural produce foster a close-knit relation, the present study explores the impacts of climate variability on the rice yields across diverse agro-climatic zones of Uttar Pradesh, India. The time-series non-parametric Mann-Kendall trend test was applied to study long term (both annual and seasonal) weather and yield data sets. Minimum temperature, encompassing all the zones, was found to be increasing within the range of 0.06 to 0.44 °C per decade. The ‘kharif’ season maximum temperature trends were found increasing in most zones. In terms of annual and seasonal rainfall trends, the results were mostly non-significant, except for Bhabhar and Tarai Zone which had witnessed a very high decadal trend indicating towards the occurrences of intense rainfall events. North Eastern Plain Zone needs a special mention owing to its large number of extreme rainfall events in three categories (>50 to 100 to 150 mm/day). Considering the annual/seasonal temperature and rainfall variability in the region, the warming trend along with spatio-temporally uncertain rainfall is likely to inflict significant impact upon the rice crop. Consequently, there is a dire need to devise strategies capable of dealing with the impacts of the prevailing climate variability on rice yields in this state of India through development of suitable adaptation options for sustainable production. The continuous and rigorous studies into this field of agro-meteorology subjected to impact assessment call for international action plans that are designed in a frame of ‘bottom-up approach’ or a ‘local to regional to country level’ strategic implementation of adaptation options to sustain yields in the rice fields.