Influence of non-stationarity and auto-correlation of climatic records on spatio-temporal trend and seasonality analysis in a region with prevailing arid and semi-arid climate, Iran

Trend and stationarity analysis of climatic variables are essential for understanding climate variability and provide useful information about the vulnerability and future changes, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. In this study, various climatic zones of Iran were investigated to assess the relationship between the trend and the stationarity of the climatic variables. The Mann-Kendall test was considered to identify the trend, while the trend free pre-whitening approach was applied for eliminating serial correlation from the time-series. Meanwhile, time series stationarity was tested by Dickey-Fuller and Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin tests. The results indicated an increasing trend for mean air temperature series at most of the stations over various climatic zones, however, after eliminating the serial correlation factor, this increasing trend changes to an insignificant decreasing trend at a 95% confidence level. The seasonal mean air temperature trend suggested a significant increase in the majority of the stations. The mean air temperature increased more in northwest towards central parts of Iran that mostly located in arid and semiarid climatic zones. Precipitation trend reveals an insignificant downward trend in most of the series over various climatic zones; furthermore, most of the stations follow a decreasing trend for seasonal precipitation. Furthermore, spatial patterns of trend and seasonality of precipitation and mean air temperature showed that the northwest parts of Iran and margin areas of the Caspian Sea are more vulnerable to the changing climate with respect to the precipitation shortfalls and warming. Stationarity analysis indicated that the stationarity of climatic series influences on their trend; so that, the series which have significant trends are not static. The findings of this investigation can help planners and policy-makers in various fields related to climatic issues, implementing better management and planning strategies to adapt to climate change and variability over Iran.