Trends and changes in tropical and summer days at the Adana Sub-Region of the Mediterranean Region, Southern Turkey

Abstract

In this study, the long-term variability and trends of the annual and seasonal numbers of summer and tropical days of the Adana Sub-region were investigated using nonlinear and linear trend detection tests for the period 1960–2014 at 14 meteorological stations. The results suggest that the annual number of summer and tropical days was generally below the long-term average through to the end of the 1980s. In particular, positive anomaly values could be observed at all stations between the years 1993–2014. With respect to the Kruskal-Wallis homogeneity test, the significant breaking date was 1993. The rapid rise of the annual number of summer (tropical) days after this year led to the inversion of the negative trends observed from 1987 to 1992 into positive ones. The increasing trend is statistically significance at 0.01 level in Yumurtalık, Mersin and Antakya for the annual number of summer and tropical days. Dörtyol, İskenderun and Elbistan were significance at 0.01 level for tropical days. The largest positive anomalies of the summer of 2010 are observed in coastal vicinity (Mersin, Yumurtalık and İskenderun). This indicates that these settlements underwent a long-term warm period and thermal conditions due to increasing temperatures in the spring and summer months. The same conditions are found in high inner areas (Göksun and Elbistan) for tropical days. It is noticed that a tendency for greater warming occurred at stations located above 1000m in the sub-region. The average number of warm days will increase 2-days per 100-years in southern part of the sub-region. The increasing trend in summer temperatures can be considered a potential risk, notably for human health and for economic and crop losses in the Adana Sub-region, including Çukurova, one of the most important agriculture areas of Turkey.