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Rapidly growing Indian cities may face extreme rainfalls: Report

"Rainfall patterns are changing throughout India. We found that there is a need to look at both global and local conditions, such as urbanisation, and how those influence climatic patterns such as rainfall," said Niyogi.

Using a data-driven method, researchers found a link between the extent of urbanisation and changing extreme rainfall patterns.

"The possible reasons for this rainfall variability might be that since development activities in urbanised areas have already been stabilised, changes in landscape characteristics are minimal and thus local circulation patterns are not significantly altered," said Niyogi.

"However, in areas undergoing rapid development, changes in extreme rainfall patterns are significant," said Niyogi.

Deforestation and land transformation could be two of the main causes of increased climate stress in urbanising areas, he said.

The study used daily rainfall data from 1901 to 2004 taken during the Indian summer monsoons season, which runs from June to September.

The rainfall totals were collected by the India Meteorological Department from a network of 1,800 stations located throughout the country.