Assessment of climate variability among seasonal trends using in situ measurements: A case study of Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

This research assessed the changes in spatial patterns and the seasonal trends in temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity over 36 years (1979-2014) using Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) datasets. The evaluation of climate deviations was the prime objective of this research. The augmented Dickey-Fuller Test (ADF) was used to scrutinize whether the data was either stationary or non-stationary. The results of the ADF test showed that all the datasets were found to be stationary at lag order 3. To observe undulations in the time series data, trend analyses were done using Sen’s slope (SS), Mann-Kendall (MK), and Cox and Stuart (CS) tests. For all the statistical analyses, we considered the 5% significance level (p = 0.05) and p < 0.05 to be statistically significant. We observed significant (p < 0.05) trends in spring (MAM) and autumn (SON) for minimum temperature (Tmin) in Punjab. We also noted a significant (p < 0.05) trend in precipitation during autumn (SON). Annually, all the variables showed a non-significant (p > 0.05) trend for Punjab, Pakistan, during the period 1979-2014. Climate variability, such as a decrease in precipitation, higher temperature, and relative humidity fluctuations, were the reasons for the imbalance in the sustainability of Punjab, Pakistan.