Frost hazard and pattern of minimum daily temperature changes in northern highlands of Jordan

الملخص EN

Occurrence of frost phenomena is a common agricultural hazard within the northern Jordan that has led to economic losses for farmers due to crop damage.

This is aggravated by lack of adequate information on frost to cushion farmers and decision makers against losses.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the recent trends of minimum daily temperature and frost recurrence during the period from 1979 to 2014 in Jordan.

Data on minimum daily temperature and nighttime frost during the winter season are examined for four climatic stations representing the northern and central regions of Jordan.

A statistical analysis approach including t- test, linear regression, moving averages and CUSUM charts have been used to test the main hypothesis of this research.

The results illustrate that the minimum daily winter temperature in northern Jordan shows a statistically significant increasing trend, and accordingly caused a decreasing trend for frost recurrence.

Results of this research agree well with the findings of previous research for different regions in Jordan.

The study proposes adoption of resilient crop cultivars, use of manual protective measures as well as site selection based on crop susceptibility as well as land surface curvature in order to avert the losses and ensure maximum crop production hence sufficient food supplies.