Analysis and farmers’ perception of climate change in the Kashmir Valley, India

Analysis of climatic variables is important for the detection and attribution of climate change trends and has received considerable attention from researchers across the globe including in India. The mountains surrounding the Kashmir Valley in northwestern India are often glacierized. Hence, the area will react strongly to even small changes in temperature and precipitation. To this end, the current study analyzes the changing patterns in precipitation and temperature for various elevation zones of the Kashmir Valley and also investigates farmers’ perceptions of climate change. The results revealed that during the last 40 years (1980–2019), the annual minimum and maximum temperatures have increased by 0.02 and 0.017 °C/year. With some numerical variations, the warming trends were observed in all seasons of different elevation zones. The rate of increasing temperature in plains and mountains was more than Karewas and foothill regions. Conversely, a downward trend of annual precipitation at − 5.01 mm/year has been recorded due to declining precipitation during spring, winter, autumn, and summer seasons at − 4.95, − 0.30, − 0.28, and − 0.06 mm/year, respectively. Higher rates of declining precipitation around the mountainous area may be detrimental to the crops of Kashmir Valley by disturbing the water supply and groundwater recharge. Focused on the farmers’ perception of climate change, the majority of farmers (> 65%) perceived the changes in temperature and precipitation in line with the above results of historical meteorological data analysis, conforming with an upward and downward trend of temperature and precipitation respectively over time. Farmers’ knowledge coupled with the actual data analysis may concertedly give a clearer understanding of climate change–related instability and patterns in weather variables, which is critically important for planning and implementing appropriate adaptation measures in their farming against climate change in the Kashmir Valley.