Investigating the Trend Changes in Temperature Extreme Indices in Iran

Abstract

It is necessary to evaluate the response of extreme events to global warming across different climates and geographical regions. This study aims to examine the trend changes of 13 temperature extreme indices over a 30-year statistical period from 1990 to 2020, using daily maximum and minimum temperature data from 37 synoptic stations in Iran. The Mann–Kendall trend test was employed to analyze the data trends. The results indicate that, except for the two indices, frost days (FDs) and ice days (IDs), the temperature extreme indices show an increasing trend across the country. The forward and backward graphs of the Mann–Kendall test reveal that the trend of the indices is significant at the 0.05 significance level, with the two indices TNn and TXn intersecting in 2009. This indicates that a mutation occurred in that year, where the increasing slope of the trend after the mutation is greater than the slope of the trend before the mutation. Moreover, the decadal changes of the indices in the three decades 1990–2000, 2000–2010, and 2010–2020 demonstrate that the highest increasing trend in temperature occurred in the second and third decades.