The study of temporal - spatial changes of high extreme rainfalls in west of Iran (1965-2016)



Extended Abstract

Introduction

Rainfall is one of the appropriate weather parameters not only in describing weather condition in one specific area but also is in estimating potential impacts of climate change in the environment and in many economic and social systems. Some studies show that during half a century weather patterns by more and severe raining events and by changes in scheduling and rain status has been changed. From 1960s with its much slope, the abundance and severity of extreme rainfalls throughout the world has increased and it is expected to continue the increase until the end of the current century. So understanding the behavior of extreme events is one of the main aspects of climate change and the increase of information about heavy rains has utmost importance for society, especially for the population who lives in areas with increased flood risk.

According to above mentioned cases and abnormal behavior and irregular rainfalls in Iran and its high variability from one hand and Iran's west region ability to heaviness and extension of rainfalls on the other hand, the necessity of understanding and study of temporal and spatial dangerous rainfalls is recognized. Among extreme rainfall characteristics, the portion of such rainfalls in total rain production is studied less. Due to the experiments carried out, the increase of annual rainfall in Iran happens through heavy rainfalls. Therefore heavy rainfall portions out of total annual rainfalls can be defined as an index of crisis. The increase of this index implies the heavy floods in rainy years and severe drought and drought years.



Data and Method

Iran's west region including East and West Azerbaijan provinces, Zanjan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Hamadan, Lorestan, and Ilam consists of about 14 percent of Iran's total area. The height of this region includes a domain of 100 to about 4000 meters. Zagros mountain ranges are the most important characteristic of west of Iran, which are drawn from north-west to south-east.

In this research, we used network data from interpolation daily rainfall observation of 823 meteorology stations from January 1st up to December 31st, 2016 by using Kriging interpolation method and by separating 6×6 km spatial. The results formed matrix interpolation process by dimension of 18993×6410. This matrix has the rain status of 6410 points of west of Iran for every day rainfall (18993). Extreme rain falls are identified in terms of threshold of 95 percentile in each point and each day of year. The rainfall of each day and each pixel is compared to that related pixel and corresponding to that day and those days which their rainfalls rates were equal to or larger than threshold were identified for studying extreme rain fall portion in total yearly rainfall, the total of equal rainfalls and more than 95 percentile is calculated for each year and each of pixel and, it is divided to total of the same pixel rainfalls in that year.

We used the least squarely error for understanding temporal- spatial behavior of regression.



Results and Discussion

The average extreme rain falls in west of Iran is under the influence of their roughness and placement and also synoptic rainfall. The proof of this claim identifies through placement of average extreme rainfall over altitudes of region. By increasing geographical latitude in Iran's western provinces, it is decreased both of total extreme rainfalls and portion of such rainfall out of total yearly rainfall. Total extreme rainfall trend shows a frequency in a domain with 16 mm in each year. The negative trend of total rainfall with the area of 74.72 percent consists of three quarters of Iran's west.

The narrow strip of the west of Kurdistan and south-west of west Azerbaijan have the highest amount of positive trend which is meaningful in certainty level of 95 percent.

The study of process showed the ratio of extreme rainfalls portion to total yearly rainfall, which is increasing about 60.7 percent of west area of this country extreme rainfalls in total yearly rainfall and the greatest part of this area is located in southern half of the studied area.

The negative trend also is located in northern half and they have consisted of 39.29 percent of studied area of these, only in 29.81 percent of region, the trend ratio of extreme rainfalls to total yearly rainfalls are meaningful in certainty level of 95 percent.

Keywords: Extreme Rainfalls, Trend, 95 Percentile, Rainfall Portion, west of Iran.