Data for the Indian Region: Analysis of

In this paper, we report the development of a high resolution (10 X 10 Lat/Long) gridded daily rainfall data set for the Indian region to fulfill the demands from the research community. We have considered daily rainfall data of 6329 stations for the interpolation analysis. However, there are only 1803 stations with a minimum 90% data availability during the analysis period (1951-2003). We have used only those 1803 stations for interpolation in order to minimize the risk of generating temporal inhomogeneities in the gridded data due to varying station densities. For the analysis, we have followed the interpolation method proposed by Shepard (1968) based on the weights calculated from the distance between the station and the grid point and also the directional effects. Standard quality controls were performed before carrying out the interpolation analysis. Comparison with similar global gridded rainfall data sets revealed that the present rainfall analysis is better in accurate representation of spatial rainfall variation. The Global data sets underestimate the heavy rainfall along the west-coast and over Northeast India. The inter-annual variability of southwest monsoon seasonal (June-September) rainfall was found to be similar in all the data sets. Using this gridded rainfall data set, an analysis was made to identify the break and active periods during the southwest monsoon season (June to September). Break (Active) periods during the monsoon season were identified as the periods in which th