Analysis of Climate Change in the Caucasus Region: End of the 20th–Beginning of the 21st Century

Alla Tashilova,Lara Kesheva,Boris Ashabokov,Nataliya Teunova

doi:10.3390/cli7010011

Abstract

The study of climate, in such a diverse climatic region as the Caucasus, is necessary in order to evaluate the influence of local factors on the formation of temperature and precipitation regimes in its various climatic zones. This study is based on the instrumental data (temperatures and precipitation) from 20 weather stations, located on the territory of the Caucasian region during 1961–2011. Mathematical statistics, trend analysis, and rescaled range Methods were used. It was found that the warming trend prevailed in all climatic zones, it intensified since the beginning of global warming (since 1976), while the changes in precipitation were not so unidirectional. The maximum warming was observed in the summer (on average by 0.3 °C/10 years) in all climatic zones. Persistence trends were investigated using the Hurst exponent H (range of variation 0–1), which showed a higher trend persistence of annual mean temperature changes (H = 0.8) compared to annual sum precipitations (H = 0.64). Spatial-correlation analysis performed for precipitations and temperatures showed a rapid decrease in the correlation between precipitations at various weather stations from R = 1 to R = 0.5, on a distance scale from 0 to 200 km. In contrast to precipitation, a high correlation (R = 1.0–0.7) was observed between regional weather stations temperatures at a distance scale from 0 to 1000 km, which indicates synchronous temperature changes in all climatic zones (unlike precipitation).

Highlights

The problem of climate change is extremely urgent today
Throughout Russia, the average growth rate of average annual air temperature has been 0.46 ◦ C/10 years in 1976–2017. This is 2.5 times the growth rate of global temperature over the same period: 0.18 ◦ C/10 years, and more than 1.5 times the average warming rate of surface air over the Earth’s land: 0.28 ◦ C/10 years [18]
In addition to the main climate-forming factors, climate of the Caucasus region is greatly influenced by the relief of the terrain, the orography of the terrain, and the distance of weather stations from each other

Summary

Introduction

The problem of climate change is extremely urgent today. The global climate on our planet is changing rapidly. In this regard, an increasing number of studies are being devoted to this problem [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. Throughout Russia, the average growth rate of average annual air temperature has been 0.46 ◦ C/10 years in 1976–2017 This is 2.5 times the growth rate of global temperature over the same period: 0.18 ◦ C/10 years, and more than 1.5 times the average warming rate of surface air over the Earth’s land: 0.28 ◦ C/10 years (estimates according to the Hadley Center and the University of East Anglia: HADCRUT4, CRUTEM4) [18]

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion