A Recent Study of the Relationship between the Precipitation Rate over Saudi Arabia in the Fall and Climatic Indices

Yehia Hafez,Abdulhaleem Labban

doi:10.1155/2020/8953967

Abstract

This paper presents a recent study of the relationship between precipitation rate (PR) over Saudi Arabia (SA) within the months of the fall season and climatic indices. The fall monthly PR data spanning the study period between 1948 and 2018 is considered. In addition, the monthly climatic index records (arctic oscillation (AO), global surface air temperature (GSAT), multivariate ENSO index (MEI), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index, Nino 3.4 index, and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI)) for the fall months were also considered. The statistical trend, anomaly, and correlation analyses are applied in this study. The results reveal that the sweeping changes in PR show generally positive trends throughout the fall seasons of the past decades. Moreover, the climatic indices have an effect on the PR over SA within the fall months and season. During the study period, the most substantial relationship recorded, with an inverse correlation of −0.7, is between the PR over SA and the climatic index of GSAT for September and October. Moreover, there is a clear correlation of +0.5 between the PR over SA and the ENSO and Nino 3.4 index for October and November.

Highlights

Saudi Arabia (SA) has suffered from an extreme precipitation variation, mainly during the fall season
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis program makes use of a perfect analysis system to assimilate records with a resolution n of 2.5 × 2.5 degree lat/long grid, by making use of previous data between 1948 and 2018. e NCEP/NCAR reanalysis 1 is the source of Saudi Arabian precipitation rate (PR) used in the present work
Is data was obtained eight times in a day as per model, since the inputs available in that era were available at 3Z, 9Z, 15Z, and 21Z, whereas the four times daily data has been available as 0Z, 6Z, 12Z, and 18Z. ese latter times were forecasted and the combined result of this early era is eight times daily. e NCEP/NCAR reanalysis 1 data was obtained from https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data. ncep.reanalysis.html

Summary

Introduction

Saudi Arabia (SA) has suffered from an extreme precipitation variation, mainly during the fall season. E present work aims to uncover the relationship between the PR variability over SA in the fall months and season and the climatic indices throughout the study period (1948–2018). The monthly datasets for the climatic indices (AO, GSAT, MEI, NAO, Nino 3.4, and SOI) for the fall months of the study period (1948–2018) are used.

Results

Conclusion