Historical trends in precipitation, temperature and drought in the Alabama–Coosa–Tallapoosa and Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint river basins

Abstract

ABSTRACTUsing station data from the United States Historical Climatology Network, we preformed a running trend analysis of temperature, precipitation and drought in the Alabama–Coosa–Tallapoosa and Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint river basins for the time period 1895–2012 on annual and monthly timescales.Our study found that long‐term precipitation and temperature trends were statistically detectible but relatively slight in the order of an increase at 3 mm per decade for precipitation and a decline of 0.02 °C per decade for temperature. Running trend analyses for the time period 1895–2012 found field‐significant and relatively large annual precipitation increases and temperature decreases between the 1950s and early 1980s associated with the 'warming hole'. The magnitude of precipitation trends for the aforementioned period was in the range of 7 mm per year for precipitation and 0.6 °C per decade for temperature. For temperature, we observed generally decreasing maximum, minimum and mean temperatures in the 1960s and 1970s and increasing temperatures from the 1970s to present. Minimum temperatures particularly showed a strong increase in recent summer months in the range of 0.3 °C per decade.Trends in the diurnal temperature range showed a recent narrowing during summer and fall months. Differences in the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) did not show a strong effect of temperature on drought for this region.