Abstract
Increasing global temperatures during the last century have had their own effects on other climatic conditions, particularly on precipitation characteristics. This study was meant to investigate the spatial and temporal monthly trends of precipitation using the least square error (LSE) approach for the northwest of Iran (NWI). To this end, a database was obtained from 250 measuring stations uniformly scattered all over NWI from 1961 to 2010. The spatial average of annual precipitation in NWI during the period of study was approximately 220.9–726.7 mm. The annual precipitation decreased from southwest to northeast, while the large amount of precipitation was concentrated in the south-west and in the mountainous areas. All over NWI, the maximum and minimum precipitation records occurred from March to May and July to September, respectively. The coefficient of variation (CV) is greater than 44 % in all of NWI and may reach over 76 % in many places. The greatest range of CV, for instance, occurred during July. The spatial variability of precipitation was consistent with a tempo-spatial pattern of precipitation trends. There was a considerable difference between the amounts of change during the months, and the negative trends were mainly attributed to areas concentrated in eastern and southern parts of NWI far from the western mountain ranges. Moreover, limited areas with positive precipitation trends can be found in very small and isolated regions. This is observable particularly in the eastern half of NWI, which is mostly located far from Westerlies. On the other hand, seasonal precipitation trends indicated a slight decrease during winter and spring and a slight increase during summer and autumn. Consequently, there were major changes in average precipitation that occurred negatively in the area under study during the observation period. This finding is in agreement with those findings by recent studies which revealed a decreasing trend of around 2 mm/year over NWI during 1966–2005.
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