Temperature variability as an indicator of climatic change in Erbil province-Iraqi Kurdistan region

Abstract EN

Climatic change is dedicated to the totality of the problem of climatic varia- bility and change – its descriptions, causes, implications and interactions among these.

Water resources, agricultural production and natural ecosystems are highly influenced by climatic changes, the current study was conducted to achieve this goal, trend analysis of monthly air temperature was performed.

The data were obtained from 8 meteorological stations distributed over Erbil province for the period of 2002 -2011.

Mann-Kandell and Sen's slope estimators were used to detect trends in monthly air temperature.

The results indicated that temperature trends were mainly positive and most of them were insignificant at 95% level of significance.

The number of months with decreasing trends tended to increase with an increase in altitude.

Significant trends occurred at a few months.

Among the winter and summer months, December and June offered more rapid trends res- pectively.