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RESEARCH PRODUCT

A statistical approach towards a regionalization of daily rainfall in Sri Lanka

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Regionalization of daily rainfall in Sri Lanka was examined using orthogonal factor analysis (OFA) based on daily rainfall data of 42 stations for a 15-year period (1971–1985). The number of potential rainy days was computed from the original data matrix and subjected to S-mode OFA. The first 10 orthogonal factors were shown as highly significant, explaining 65.1 per cent of the total variance of the whole data matrix, where the level of eigenvalues represented was > 1.0. Noticeably, the 10 orthogonal factors clearly revealed the different homogeneous daily rainfall regions in Sri Lanka (labelled as A to J), according to the orthogonal factor high loadings matrix. Delimitation of the daily rainfall regions was carried out in accordance with the ‘variance boundaries’ resulting from the rotated factor loadings matrix. The number of potential rainy days has been identified for each region, showing an increasing trend with elevation. The probability of rainy days, wet spells and their mean length have been computed separately on a monthly and yearly basis in order to analyse the nature of the daily rainfall reliability in each region. The main factors for the daily rainfall fluctuation patterns in Sri Lanka are the typical monsoon rainfall, the dominant influence of the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone and topography.