Elsevier

Atmospheric Research

Volume 198, 1 December 2017, Pages 97-107
Atmospheric Research

Long-term trends in daily temperature extremes in Iraq

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2017.08.011Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Secular trends in temperature and temperature extremes in Iraq are assessed by considering the effect of long-term persistence in time series.

  • Many of the changes in temperature indices estimated using Mann-Kendall test are may be due to natural variability of climate

  • Only the daily hot extremes are increasing in most parts of Iraq

Abstract

The existence of long-term persistence (LTP) in hydro-climatic time series can lead to considerable change in significance of trends. Therefore, past findings of climatic trend studies that did not consider LTP became a disputable issue. A study has been conducted to assess the trends in temperature and temperature extremes in Iraq in recent years (1965–2015) using both ordinary Mann-Kendal (MK) test; and the modified Mann-Kendall (m-MK) test, which can differentiate the multi-decadal oscillatory variations from secular trends. Trends in annual and seasonal minimum and maximum temperatures, diurnal temperature range (DTR), and 14 temperature-related extremes were assessed. MK test detected the significant increases in minimum and maximum temperature at all stations, where m-MK test detected at 86% and 80% of all stations, respectively. The temperature in Iraq is increasing 2 to 7 times faster than global temperature rise. The minimum temperature is increasing more (0.48–1.17 °C/decade) than maximum temperature (0.25–1.01 °C/decade). Temperature rise is higher in northern Iraq and in summer. The hot extremes particularly warm nights are increasing all over Iraq at a rate of 2.92–10.69 days/decade, respectively. On the other hand, numbers of cold days are decreasing at some stations at a rate of − 2.65 to − 8.40 days/decade. The use of m-MK test along with MK test confirms the significant increase in temperature and some of the temperature extremes in Iraq. This study suggests that trends in many temperature extremes in the region estimated in previous studies using MK test may be due to natural variability of climate, which empathizes the need for validation of the trends by considering LTP in time series.

Introduction

Nowadays climate change has become one of the most severe environmental problems in the world (Wang et al., 2016). Increased concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG) due to massive industrialization and widespread use of fossil fuels in the last century has changed the global energy balance (Wentz et al., 2007, Chu et al., 2010, Huang et al., 2011). The alternation of Earth's energy balance due to the changes in Earth's atmospheric composition has caused a change in global climate. It has been reported that the Earth's temperature has increased by 0.74 °C in the last hundred years (1906–2005). The increase became much significant after 1970, with a rate of 0.15 °C/decade (IPCC, 2013).

Temperature at the regional scale is also increasing in the line of global warming (Shahid, 2010, Mayowa et al., 2015, Ghasemi, 2015, Abatan et al., 2015). Changes in temperature get involved in temperature variability as well temperature extremes (Song et al., 2014, Matiu et al., 2016). The implications of these changes are particularly significant for areas already under stress, such as in arid region where temperature extremes is a common phenomenon. Arid regions are often predicted one of the most vulnerable regions to environmental changes (Salguero-Gómez et al., 2012, Dutta and Chaudhuri, 2015). According to IPCC (2013), the increased temperature in arid region of Asia could cause an increase in potential evapotranspiration by few folds, which may lead to severe water-stress conditions, deterioration of food security and more people at the risk of hunger.

Iraq predominantly has an arid climate and thus has frequently experienced temperature extremes. A strong ridge of high pressure usually persists over the Middle East during the month of July, resulting in the extreme heat wave (Nasrallah et al., 2004). As the land heats up around the Persian Gulf, the air rises up quickly and rushes inland, creating an onshore wind that transports humid air from sea contributing to the high humidity, which causes some of the highest combinations of heat and humidity called wet bulb temperature (WBT) in the world. The heating of the sea due to global warming may produce high humidity and increase WBT in Middle East. Therefore, the region is generally considered vulnerable to climate change. Iraq has been ranked as one of the most vulnerable counties in Arab region to climate change (UNDP, 2010). The country has been experiencing more summer heat waves in recent years. On July 22, 2016, temperature in the southern city of Basrah reached to 54 °C which is one of the hottest ever recorded in the Eastern Hemisphere. Temperature extremes are closely related to public health (Xiang et al., 2014), agriculture (Niero et al., 2015, Prasad et al., 2008), environment (El-Sharkawy, 2014, Cardil et al., 2014), energy demands (Shahid, 2012, Liu and Sweeney, 2012), economy (Barros et al., 2015), refugees (WMO, 2016) and social unrest (Reich et al., 2014, Tencer et al., 2014). Therefore, it is essential to study the trends in extreme temperatures in the context of global climatic change.

Despite this enormous importance, studies related to temperature and temperature extremes have been very limited for Iraq. Only two studies have been significantly conducted so far to assess the trends in temperature in Iraq. Robaa and Al-Barazanji (2015) assessed the trends in surface air temperatures at eleven stations for the period 1972–2011 using Mann-Kendall test, Sen's slope estimator and linear regression. They reported the increasing trend in annual minimum and maximum temperatures at most stations of Iraq. Muslih and Błażejczyk (2016) assessed the inter-annual variations and the long-term trends of monthly temperatures at seven observation stations using linear regression and Mann-Kendall (MK) test. They also reported the increasing trends with the strongest warming trends in the summer months. Monthly mean temperature data were used in both studies to assess only the seasonal and annual trends in temperature of Iraq for different time periods. No study has been conducted so far to assess the changes in temperature related extremes in Iraq. Furthermore, the trends in DTR which is considered as the fingerprint of climate change (Braganza et al., 2003) has not been conducted in Iraq so far. However, studies in neighboring countries indicate increase in temperature related extremes in the region (Tabari and Talaee, 2011, AlSarmi and Washington, 2014, Zhang et al., 2005, Al Senafi and Anis, 2015, Hereher, 2016, Sarli et al., 2016). A summary of those studies is given in Table 1. This emphasizes the need for assessment of temperature extremes in Iraq.

Non-parametric Mann-Kendall (MK) test are most widely used for hydrological trend analysis as they are robust against outliers, distribution free and low sensitivity to abrupt breaks in time series (Yue et al., 2002, Yue and Wang, 2004, Shahid, 2010, Zamani et al., 2016). However, it has been found that the positive serial autocorrelation in the data increases the chance for significance in trend in MK test. Yue and Wang, 2004used “pre-whitening” of the data, where serial correlation was first removed and then the trend test was performed on the uncorrelated residuals. On the other hand, Hamed and Rao (1998) and Yue and Wang (2004) introduced modified Mann–Kendall trend test to account for the effect of serial correlation.

The significance of the hydroclimatic trends over time is very sensitive to the assumptions of whether the underlying data have short-term or long-term persistence. Generally, if there is a significant correlation at long lags then a process is considered to exhibit long-term persistence (LTP) (Fathian et al., 2016). This LTP can be estimated by a coefficient “H” known as the Hurst coefficient and the strength of the LTP can be exhibited in the time series when 0.5 < H < 1 while a random process has H = 0.5 (Karagiannis et al., 2004). The existence of LTP in time series affect the significance of the MK test (Koutsoyiannis, 2003). Hamed, 2008, Hamed, 2009 modified the MK method to account for the scaling effect, thus enhancing the ability of the test to differentiate the multi-decadal oscillatory variations from long-term persistence or secular trends. Thus, the modified Mann-Kendall (m-MK) test is also used in the present study to confirm the significance of MK test for temperature extremes previously observed in the Middle East.

Thus, the objectives of this study are to assess the trends in (i) annual and seasonal daily average minimum and maximum temperatures; (ii) annual and seasonal DTR; and (iii) a matrix of temperature related extremes in Iraq for the period 1965–2015 using both MK and m-MK tests. Total 14 temperature extremes are considered in the present study which includes number of summer hot days and nights, winter warm days and cold nights, and hot and cold spells in a year. It is expected that the assessment of trends in temperature and temperature related extremes will be helpful for adaptation in public health, agriculture and water resources management as well as people's well-being and development of Iraq.

Section snippets

Description of Iraq climate

Iraq, located in southwest Asia (Lat: 29°15′N-38°15′N and Long: 38°45–48°45′E) covers an area of 438,320 km2. Topography of Iraq is like a large basin where the Mesopotamian alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates is surrounded by mountains in the north and the east having an elevation up to 3550 m (Badry et al., 1979). The climate in Iraq varies widely over space. The country can be broadly classified into four regions based on topography and climate (Fig. 1) (FAO, 2003): Zone-I: the

Data and sources

Historical records of daily minimum and maximum temperatures of Iraq for the period (1965–2015) were collected from the Iraq meteorological organization & seismology (IMOS) for the present study. Location of gauging stations in the map of Iraq is shown in Fig. 1 and description of all stations is given in Table 2.

Iraq has 17 well-maintained automatic weather stations. However, long-term (at least 30 years) daily rainfall records with less amount of missing data are available only in 15 stations.

Trends in annual average temperature

Daily temperature data were converted to annual time series to assess the annual trends in temperature. DTR estimated from daily maximum and minimum temperature data were also converted to yearly time series to estimate annual trend in DTR. Time series of maximum and minimum temperature at four stations namely, Mosul, Kirkuk, Basrah, and Rutba located in four climatic zones are shown in Fig. 2. The estimated trends in temperature at all the stations are given in Table 4. The values represent

Discussion

The results revealed the noticeable difference in the trends using MK and m-MK tests. Number of stations showing significant trend in temperature indices in MK test drastically reduced when m-MK test was used. A number of studies conducted in recent years revealed the reduction of significance in trend of hydro-climatic data when m-MK tests was used (Khaliq et al., 2009, Kumar et al., 2009, Hodgkins and Dudley, 2011, Lacombe and McCartney, 2014, Shahid et al., 2014, Dudley et al., 2017). The

Conclusion

Trends in temperature and extreme temperature have been assessed in this study using non-parametric MK and m-MK tests. MK test has extensively used in Arabian region to assess climatic trends without considering the effect of LTP. This study used m-MK along with MK test to confirm the significance of the trends obtained from previous studies. Furthermore, trends in numbers of hot and cold extremes in Iraq have been assessed for the first time.

This study revealed that annual average of minimum

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to the Iraq meteorological organization & seismology (IMOS) for providing daily temperature data of Iraq. The authors are also grateful to the Ministry of Education Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for providing financial support for this research through GUP grant no. Q.J130000.2522.10H36.

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