An overview of climate change in Iran: facts and statistics

Abstract

Background: The climate change fact is intensive among the Middle East countries and especially Iran. Among the Middle East countries, Iran will experience an increase of 2.6 °C in mean temperatures and a 35% decline in precipitation in the next decades. In vice versa, Iran by total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions nearly to 616,741 million tons of CO2 is the first responsible country to climate change in the Middle East, and seventh in the world. The high-level contribution of Iran to emissions of GHG depends on a significant production of oil, gas, and rapid urbanization. The present study aimed to reveal an overview of climate change facts and statistics in Iran. Results: In this manuscript, the evidential facts on climate change were investigated in global, regional, and national scales. For this purpose, the main increasing annual temperature and GHG emissions were considered. Besides, the variations of meteorological characteristics such as surface temperature, total precipitation, and upward longwave radiation (ULR) were reviewed in Iran indicating an anomalous decrease in precipitation events and anomalous increase in ULR and temperature characteristics confirming the global warming/climate change effects. Afterward, the legislative agreements on climate change concerning international adoptions and conventions were reviewed from Rio 1992 to NY 2016. Conclusions: The results showed that further research and development should be considered the novel methods to explore renewable energy applications and to mitigate GHG emissions in order to overcome the increased risk of climate change effects. Technological affairs and international participants should support this target.