Precipitation Trend Analysis by Mann-Kendall Test: A Case of Tianchang County Anhui Province, China

The purpose of this research is to study the temporal variability of precipitation time series of Tianchang County in Anhui Province, China to aid in the understanding of the state of the hydrology of the catchment. Trend analysis of one of the main component of the water balance of a catchment and a climate variable, precipitation was conducted with the aim of detecting a possible trend in the precipitation time series of Tianchang County, the non-parametric Mann- Kendall test was applied to precipitation series from 1951-2010 of Tianchang County. It was performed using Trend (version 1.0.2) to identify the significant positive or negative trends in the precipitation data if any. The 59 years period of precipitation data for the different towns in whole area showed, on the whole, some significant trend at an alpha level of 0.01 and 0.05 when grouped into the four seasons present in the area. The trend analysis revealed an overall upward and significant trend in five towns namely Datong, Xinjie, Shiliang, Qinlan and Tongcheng with downward statistically non-significant trend in the other ten areas .Using hypothesis testing, the null hypothesis states that there is no trend and alternative state there is a trend. From the results we reject the null hypothesis within the level of confidence 0.05 and 0.01. The rising rate of precipitation in some months and decreasing in others signifies an overall random pattern in the time series. This result is a part contribution to the effect of Climate change on hydrology and indicates that there is still room for research on the impact of climate change to ensure sustainable development in future.