FREQUENCY STRUCTURE OF MAJOR RAINFALL EVENTS IN THE NORTH-EASTERN PART OF BANGLADESH

The amount of rainfall received over an area is an important factor in assessing availability of water to meet various demands for agriculture, industry, irrigation, generation of hydroelectricity and other human activities. The distribution of rainfall in time and space is, therefore, an important factor for the economic development of a country. Due to rapid urbanization in various parts of the north-eastern region of Bangladesh, there is a growing need to study the rainfall pattern, and also frequency of the heavy rainfall events. This study was checked monthly average rainfall from daily records of last 50 years for this region. In order to check the major events, time history of monthly rainfall data were transformed into frequency domain using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Estimated peak frequency (11.98 month) depicts that major rainfall events of a year are occurring earlier than the previous year. The variability of rainfall in time scale was also checked from filtered signals, which is very useful for long-term water resources planning, agricultural development and disaster management for Bangladesh.