Figure 14 – India: variability of annual rainfall

7. Climatic Regions of India

India is often referred to as a country with tropical monsoon type of climate. However, the large latitudinal extent, the presence of Himalayas in the north, the India Ocean in the south have resulted in great variations in the distribution of temperature and precipitation in the India. The climate of north is different from that of south and so is the climate of east from that of the west.

To study the variations of climate in various parts, India is divided into a large number of climatic regions of small size. A climatic region is that area which possesses a broad uniformity of climatic conditions caused by the combined effects of climatic elements – temperature, pressure, winds, humidity and precipitation. Temperature and rainfall are two important elements which are considered to be decisive in all the schemes of climatic classification. There are different schemes of classification of climate. Major climatic types of India based on Koeppen’s scheme have been show in figure 15.