Abstract:
Landslides related to heavy rainfall cause widespread property damage and
occasional loss of lives. During the last ten years it has become evident that the most devastating
landslide events tend to occur as a result of comparatively short duration, high intense rainfall
compared to the previously had lower intense prolonged rainfalls. At a time when climate change and
global warming issues are considered as hot topics, it is required to evaluate the changes and their
impacts on landslides frequencies in Sri Lanka. This study looks at extreme rain conditions in the
context of climate change in landslide prone districts in Sri Lanka. Mainly two trend patterns, seasonal
distribution of landslides and Annual total time series distribution of landslides were developed to get
the effect of climate changes in selected landslide prone districts in Sri Lanka. Identification of extreme
rainfall conditions were done based on data collected from the Department ofMeteorology, Sri Lanka.
The possible trends are discussed using above rainfall variations and the collected landslide frequency data
