Consider the following statements: 1. The normal annual rainfall of a station is obtained as the arithmetic average of the successive annual rainfall in the last 30 years. 2. The “normal rainfalls” are updated by deleting the needful number of oldest years’ data from the record and adding the needful number of most recent years’ data to the record. 3. The standard deviation computed for the rainfall data is taken as a measure of the variability of the rainfall during the self-same set of years. 4. If the observed rainfall in any year is less than the current average annual rainfall, then that year is called a dry year. Which of the above statements are correct?
Consider the following statements: 1. The normal annual rainfall of a station is obtained as the arithmetic average of the successive annual rainfall in the last 30 years. 2. The “normal rainfalls” are updated by deleting the needful number of oldest years’ data from the record and adding the needful number of most recent years’ data to the record. 3. The standard deviation computed for the rainfall data is taken as a measure of the variability of the rainfall during the self-same set of years. 4. If the observed rainfall in any year is less than the current average annual rainfall, then that year is called a dry year. Which of the above statements are correct? Correct Answer 1, 3 and 4 only
Statement 1: True
The average value of rainfall for a day, month or a year (or any other suitable time interval) on the basis of record of last 30 years, is called normal annual rainfall.
Now to understand above definition, consider the following simple example:
Let for the period 1990-2020, the average of annual rainfall is estimated and found to be 200 cm, this is the normal annual rainfall. Now let for the next year i.e. 2021 the normal annual rainfall will not be 200 cm, it will be the average of annual rainfall for the period 1991 – 2021 (last 30 years), this may be greater than 200 cm or less than 200 cm i.e. we deleted the year 1990 and in place of 1990, we consider the annual rainfall of year 2021 to estimate the annual rainfall.
Statement 2: Wrong
Normal rainfall is recomputed every decade to account for factors that may affect the amount of rainfall on that area like change in land use, environment, etc.
We cannot updated it by deleting or addition of needful data to the record.
Statement 3: True
The standard deviation for any set of data represents the degree of variability in data points. Higher the standard deviation, higher will be the variability. In this case data point is rainfall.
Therefore, the standard deviation computed for the rainfall data is taken as a measure of the variability of the rainfall during the same years.
Statement 4: True
Amount of rainfall collected by a rain gauge station in last 24 hours is called daily rainfall and amount collected in one year is called annual rainfall. The average value of this annual rainfall over a period of 35 years is called average annual rainfall.
If the observed rainfall in any year < Average annual rainfall – that year is dry year (Bad year)
If the observed rainfall in any year > Average annual rainfall – that year is Wet year (Good year)
If the observed rainfall in any year = Average annual rainfall – that year is normal year