A Climate Change Impact: Variation in Precipitation Patterns, and Increased Drought Risk in Turkey

Since the industrial revolution, temperature averages have been changing both in local and global scale. These variations are related with the climate and global warming changes. Such typical changes (i.e., increasing heavy precipitation, and declined light or total precipitation) are also observed in Turkey. As expected, decreased precipitation usually promotes drought conditions, and can cause extended dry days or periods. Thus, strong relationship can be considered between precipitation scarcity and drought conditions. In this study, changes in precipitation (i.e., total, bottom/lowest and extreme 10%), dry days length, dry spells (>6 days) and drought severity risk based on Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) were evaluated quantitatively over Turkey from 1971 to 2000 with regards to climate changes. Trend analysis is performed by using Innovative-Şen analysis (ITA) method to evaluate trend behavior of precipitation, lengths of dry days and spells. Results show that changes in dry days (ΔDD/ΔT) converge to (-2% ±3%)/0C, while changes in prolonged dry spells change (ΔDS/ΔT) are comparatively higher (3% ±5%)/0C. For precipitations, mean values of ΔP/ΔT converges to constant value as (-6% ±8%)/0C, (0% ±2%)/0C and (-1% ±4%)/0C for total, top 10% heavy and lowest 10% precipitations, respectively. These changes are supported by ITA outputs. All results support and point out that prolonged drought risk frequency and severity has been increasing.

PDF

___

E. M. Laflamme, E. Linder, Y. Pan, Statistical downscaling of regional climate model output to achieve projections of precipitation extremes. Weather and Climate Extremes. 12, 15–23, 2015.

M. A. Nasef, “Using GIS and statistical methods to detect the multi-decadal variability for temperature trends on Egypt: 1960–2000.” Geographia Technica, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 46–60, 2012.

S. Solomon, K. H. Rosenlof, R. W. Portmann, J. S. Daniel, S. M. Davis, T. J. Sanford, and G.K. Plattner, “Contributions of stratospheric water vapor to decadal changes in the rate of global warming.” Science, 327: 1219–1223, 2010.

M. Rajeevan, J. Bhate, A. K. Jaswal, Analysis of variability and trends of extreme rainfall events over India using 104 years of gridded daily rainfall data. Geophysical Research Letters. 35, 2008.

G. Villarini, J. A. Smith, and G. A. Vecchi, “Changing frequency of heavy rainfall over the Central United States.” J. Clim., 26, 351–357, 2013.

K. E. Trenberth, A. Dai, R. M. Rasmussen, and D. B. Parsons, “The changing character of precipitation, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 84, 1205–1217, 2003.

İ. Dabanlı, A.K. Mishra, and Z. Şen, “Long- Term Spatio-temporal Drought Variability in Turkey.” Journal of Hydrology, 552, 779-792, 2017.

U. Beyaztas, B. Bickici Arikan, B. H. Beyaztas, E. Kahya, “Construction of prediction intervals for Palmer Drought Severity Index using bootstrap.” Journal of Hydrology, 559, 461–470, 2018.

J. M. Garcia-Ruiz, J. I. Lopez-Moreno, S. M. Vicente-Serrano, T. Lasanta-Martinez, and S. Begueria. “Mediterranean water resources in a global change scenario.” Earth-Science Reviews, 105(3–4): 121–139, 2011.

Z. Şen, “Innovative trend analysis methodology.” J Hydrol Eng, 17(9):1042–1046, 2012.

S. M. Vicente-Serrano, J. S. Gonzalez-Hidalgo, M. Luis, and J. Ravento ´s, “Drought patterns in the Mediterranean area: The Valencia region (eastern Spain).” Clim. Res., 26, 5–15, 2004.

M. Piccarreta, D. Capolongo, and F. Boenzi. “Trend analysis of precipitation and drought in Basilicata from 1923 to 2000 within a southern Italy context.” International Journal of Climatology, 24: 907–922, 2004.

P. M. Sousa, R. M. Trigo, P. Aizpurua, R. Nieto, L. Gimeno, and R. Garcia-Herrera. “Trends and extremes of drought indices throughout the 20th century in the Mediterra- nean.” Natural Hazards and Earth System Science 11: 33–51, 2011.

A. Shabbar, W. Skinner, “Summer drought patterns in Canada and the relationship to global sea surface temperatures.” Journal of Climate. 17, 2866–2880, 2004.

P. Berg, J. Haerter, P. Thejll, C. Piani, S. Hagemann, and J. Christensen, “Seasonal characteristics of the relationship between daily precipitation intensity and surface temperature.” J. Geophys. Res., 114(D18), D18102, 2009.

A. T. De Gaetano, “Time-dependent changes in extreme- precipitation return-period amounts in the continental United States.” J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 48, 2086–2099, 2009.

P. Ya. Groisman, R. W. Knight, D. R. Easterling, T. R. Karl, G. C. Hegerl, and V. N. Razuvaev, “Trends in intense pre- cipitation in the climate record.” J. Climate, 18, 1326–1350, 2005.

G. Lenderink, and E. Van Meijgaard, “Increase in hourly precipitation extremes beyond expectations from temperature changes.” Nat. Geosci., 1, 511–514, 2008.

S. B. Shaw, A. A. Royem, and S. J. Riha, “The relationship between extreme hourly precipitation and surface temperature in different hydroclimatic regions of the United States.” J. Hydrometeor., 12, 319–325, 2011.

N., Utsumi, S. Seto, S. Kanae, E. E. Maeda, and T. Oki, “Does higher surface temperature intensify extreme precipitation?” Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L16708, 2011.

R. Wu, J. Chen, and Z. Wen, “Precipitationsurface temperature relationship in the IPCC CMIP5 models.” Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 30(3), 766–778, 2013.

C. Lepore, J. T. Allen, and M. K. Tippett, “Relationships between hourly rainfall intensity and atmospheric variables over the contiguous United States.” Journal of Climate, 29(9), 3181– 3197, 2016.

S. C. Liu, C. Fu, C.-J. Shiu, J.-P. Chen, and F. Wu, “Temperature dependence of global precipitation extremes.” Geophysical Research Letters, 36(17), 1–4, 2009.

A. Mishra, S. C. Liu, “Changes in precipitation pattern and risk of drought over India in the context of global warming.” Journal of Geophysical Research. 119, 7833–7841, 2014.

M. A. O’Driscoll, and D. R. DeWalle, “Streamair temperature relations to classify streamground water interactions in a karst setting, central Pennsylvania, USA.” Journal of Hydrology, 329(1–2), 140–153, 2006.

S. Sırdas, and Z. Sen, “Spatio-temporal drought analysis in the Trakya region, Turkey.” Hydrolo. Sci. J. 48 (5), 809–820, 2003.

F. K. Sönmez, A. Ü. Kömüscü, A. Erkan, E. Turgu, “An analysis of spatial and temporal dimension of drought vulnerability in Turkey using the standardized precipitation index.” Natural Hazards. 35, 243–264, 2005.

T.B. McKee, N.J. Doesken, J. Kleist, “The relationship of drought frequency and duration t time scales.” In: 8th Conference on Applied Climatology. American Meteorological Society, Anaheim, California, 1993.

T. W. Kim, J. B. Valdés, B. Nijssen, D. Roncayolo,” Quantification of linkages between large-scale climatic patterns and precipitation in the Colorado River Basin.” Journal of Hydrology. 321, 173–186, 2006.

E. Dutra, F. Wetterhall, F. Di Giuseppe, G. Naumann, P. Barbosa, J. Vogt, W. Pozzi, and F. Pappenberger, “Global meteorological drought- Part 1: Probabilistic monitoring.” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. 18, 2657–2667 2014.

S.M. Vicente-Serrano, S. Begueria, J.I. Lopez- Moreno, “A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index.” J. Climate 23 (7), 1696–1718, 2010.

A.K. Mishra, and V.P. Singh, “A review of drought concepts.” Journal of Hydrology, 391 (1–2), 202–216, 2010.

R. Tareghian, P. F. Rasmussen, “Statistical downscaling of precipitation using quantile regression.” Journal of Hydrology. 487, 122– 135, 2013.

I. Dabanli, I, “Temperature difference relationship among precipitation, dry days, and spells in Turkey”, Theor Appl Climatol, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-018-2649-4

İ. Dabanlı, and Z. Şen, “Precipitation projections under GCMs perspective and Turkish Water Foundation (TWF) statistical downscaling model procedures.” Theor Appl Climatol 132: 153, 2018.