Decadal Surface Temperature Trends in Iraq using NOAA/ESRL Gridded High Resolution Data

Abstract

Global warming has major impacts on world environment and human activities and it has been of increasing concern by scientific community, governmental agencies, and public. Iraq as one of the Middle East countries is vulnerable to global warming. Recent research works indicated that Iraq is facing an increasing heat waves and more aridity. The aim of this work is to analyze long-term temperature (1900-2017) to determine the warming and cooling phases at Mosul (north), Baghdad (center), Rutba (desert), and Basra (south). Gridded high-resolution monthly means of temperature were obtained from NOAA/ESRL. 30 years (1981-2010) available data from Iraqi Meteorological Organization were used to verify The NOAA/ESRL data. Results of comparisons of the two sets of data indicated that they are highly correlated. Time series analysis showed that the most effect of global warming on Iraq occurred on the decades of 2000’s and 2010’s during summer months (Jun, July, and Aug). The most affected cities were Baghdad and Basra. The less affected city was Rutba. Rutba is less populated town located on the desert near the borders with Jordan. Analysis of temperature decadal anomalies showed that from 1900’s to 1980’s temperature was cooling with anomalies between 0 and -0.5°C (except during 1960’s anomalies were less than +0.25). The results also indicated that during the last three decades (1990’s to 2010’s) temperature was warming and the highest warming (about +1.5 °C) occurred during last eight years (2010-2017) in all four cities.