Due to climate variability and climate change there is an increase in magnitude and frequency of extreme precipitation events. During the last few decades these extreme rainfall events have been increased in global as well as on regional scale. Our climate is very much affected by the changes in frequency of extreme rainfall events. Particularly, variability of extreme rainfall events has been studied over one of the most valuable Indian region i.e. over Indo-Gangetic plain (IGP). Long term trend in extreme events has been analyzed with the help of IMD classification. The classification is considered for moderate rain (2.5–64.4 mm; category I), heavy rain (64.5–124.4 mm; category II) and very heavy rain (124.5 mm or more; category III) and the categorization of rainfall events is based on daily rainfall for the period 1901–2010 during Indian summer monsoon (JJAS). The significant long term trend in frequency of extreme rainfall events is analyzed using the statistical test. Long term trend analysis shows the significant decreasing trend for categories II and III. However, an increasing rainfall frequency is observed for moderate rainfall events (category I) during the considered period. A significant interannual and inter-decadal fluctuation in rainfall frequency and magnitude were observed over IGP. Events of moderate and heavy rainfall increases during the withdrawal period of Indian summer monsoon, which might contribute in several cases of flood in the region of IGP. In term of distribution and contribution of rainfall in agriculture area categories I and II, rainfall events are more important but changes in rainfall pattern may lead to flood and drought risk over IGP. The policy making decision for disaster risk and food security should be based on spatial as well as temporal variability of rainfall pattern over IGP region.

Since eternity, the Earth’s temperature has varied or fluctuated; it has its cooling and hot timing dependency on its orbital position as well as the isolation received from the Sun. The global climate continues to change rapidly compared to the speed of the natural variations in climate. Therefore, the spatially complete representations of surface climate are required for many purposes in applied sciences. But in recent centuries, the main matter of concern is that Earth’s normal temperature fluctuation is being influenced by some external factors such as enhanced greenhouse gases because of extreme uses of fossil fuels, severe industrialization, advance urbanization, etc. This study presents a comprehensive surface temperature dataset of Climatic Research Unit (CRU) available since 1901 for India, which is used to document significant changes in Indian temperature over ten decades, during winter season (January and February), pre-monsoon (March–May), monsoon (June–September) and post-monsoon (October–December) to examine the patterns and possible effects of global warming. A strong increasing pattern is observed with the fast growing of the development after 1950 which has shown nearly doubled in the last 50 yrs. The mean temperature during winter for the 2000s shows a consistent pattern of warming over the Himalayan region, northwestern and southern India, and a pattern of the warming observed over northeastern India and extending southwestward across central India during post-monsoon.