TY - JOUR
T1 - Changes in extreme temperature and precipitation indices
T2 - Using an innovative daily homogenized database in Israel
AU - Yosef, Yizhak
AU - Aguilar, Enric
AU - Alpert, Pinhas
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Royal Meteorological Society
PY - 2019/11/15
Y1 - 2019/11/15
N2 - This study examines the 1950–2017 temporal changes in climate extremes in Israel, which is located in the East Mediterranean (EM), a region which suffers from a scarcity of long and reliable datasets. It is well known that most long-term records are affected by artificial shifts most commonly caused by station relocation, instrumental modification and local environmental changes. Therefore, for the first time, a thorough homogenization (detection and correction) routine was developed and implemented in the long-term records. Consequently, a new daily adjusted dataset has been generated, including 34 temperature stations and 60 precipitation stations. Based on this comprehensive dataset, 38 extreme indices recommended by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and the Expert Team on Sector-specific Climate Indices have been calculated. These indices will help various sectors to plan properly mitigation actions and adaptation for climate change, in addition to facilitating future studies for the EM. The results showed highly significant changes in temperature extremes associated with warming, especially for those indices derived from the daily minimum temperature (TN, 1950–2017), whereas the maximum temperature (TX) exhibited a similar increasing magnitude of the TN (~0.55°C/decade) in the last 30 years. The warming trends, which are non-monotonic, seem to have been particularly strong since the early 1990s. The coastal area is characterized by higher heat stress during the nighttime, while mountains exhibit a strong tendency towards increasing temperatures during the noon hours. A reduction in the total precipitation amount and in the number of wet days with a tendency towards more intense wet days was found. Although all the regional trends of the precipitation indices were not statistically significant (p ≤.05), they showed a fine spatial coherence.
AB - This study examines the 1950–2017 temporal changes in climate extremes in Israel, which is located in the East Mediterranean (EM), a region which suffers from a scarcity of long and reliable datasets. It is well known that most long-term records are affected by artificial shifts most commonly caused by station relocation, instrumental modification and local environmental changes. Therefore, for the first time, a thorough homogenization (detection and correction) routine was developed and implemented in the long-term records. Consequently, a new daily adjusted dataset has been generated, including 34 temperature stations and 60 precipitation stations. Based on this comprehensive dataset, 38 extreme indices recommended by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and the Expert Team on Sector-specific Climate Indices have been calculated. These indices will help various sectors to plan properly mitigation actions and adaptation for climate change, in addition to facilitating future studies for the EM. The results showed highly significant changes in temperature extremes associated with warming, especially for those indices derived from the daily minimum temperature (TN, 1950–2017), whereas the maximum temperature (TX) exhibited a similar increasing magnitude of the TN (~0.55°C/decade) in the last 30 years. The warming trends, which are non-monotonic, seem to have been particularly strong since the early 1990s. The coastal area is characterized by higher heat stress during the nighttime, while mountains exhibit a strong tendency towards increasing temperatures during the noon hours. A reduction in the total precipitation amount and in the number of wet days with a tendency towards more intense wet days was found. Although all the regional trends of the precipitation indices were not statistically significant (p ≤.05), they showed a fine spatial coherence.
KW - East Mediterranean
KW - Israel
KW - climate change
KW - extreme indices
KW - homogenization
KW - precipitation
KW - temperature
KW - trend analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85066048254&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/joc.6125
DO - 10.1002/joc.6125
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AN - SCOPUS:85066048254
SN - 0899-8418
VL - 39
SP - 5022
EP - 5045
JO - International Journal of Climatology
JF - International Journal of Climatology
IS - 13
ER -