Temperature changes in Büyük Menderes Basin (Turkey): has there been a warming hiatus at early 2000s ?

Year 2016, Volume: 33 Issue: 2, 72 - 78, 26.09.2016

Ercan Yeşilırmak

https://doi.org/10.13002/jafag972

Abstract

In the recent decade, a speculation has arisen on the evolution of global mean surface temperature, that there has been a slowdown in the rate of temperature increase or a cooling after the unusually strong El-Nino event in 1997/1998. This phenomenon is called as “slowdown”, “hiatus” or “pause”. Beside of global evidences, some studies in regional or sub-regional scales have also shown the existence of a hiatus, for example in China and Spain. The aim of this study is to examine the possible existence of so-called hiatus in a basin scale, in Büyük Menderes basin located in western Turkey. Temperature data covered the period from 1969 to 2013 for five climatic stations scattared homogeneously over the basin. Mann-Kendall test, Sen’s Slope Estimator and an innovative trend analysis technique were used to assess the temperature changes. The results showed that Büyük Menderes basin has experienced a continued warming at early 2000s with a weaker rate and insignificant at %95 level in comparison to the strong warming at the last one or two decades of 20th century. Consequently, the warming slowdown detected in global scale is also evident in Büyük Menderes basin.

Keywords

Büyük Menderes basin, climate change, global warming, Turkey, warming hiatus

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