Abstract
The Diurnal Temperature Range (DTR) profoundly affects human health, agriculture, eco-system, and socioeconomic systems. In this study, we analyzed past and future changes in DTR using gridded Climate Research Unit (CRU) datasets for the years 1950–2020 and an ensemble means of thirteen bias-corrected Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5) scenarios for the rest of the 21st century over the southern slope of Central Himalaya, Nepal. Furthermore, the potential drivers (precipitation and cloud cover) of seasonal and annual DTR were studied using correlation analysis. This study found that the DTR trends generally declined; the highest decrease was observed in the pre-monsoon and winter at a rate of 0.09 °C/decade (p ≤ 0.01). As expected, DTR demonstrated a significant negative correlation with cloudiness and precipitation in all four seasons. Further, the decreased DTR was weakly related to the Sea Surface Temperature variation (SST) in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans. We found that the projected DTR changes in the future varied from a marginal increase under the SSP1-2.6 (only pre-monsoon) scenario to continued significant decreases under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5. Insights based on retrospective and prospective evaluation help to understand the long-term evolution of diurnal temperature variations.
Highlights
The surface air temperature is an essential climatic variable mediating the diversity of biological, physical, and chemical processes guaranteeing the sustainability of life on earth [1,2]
Decreasing seasonal Diurnal Temperature Range (DTR) trends were observed during the study period, with a significant decrease (Figure 2a,d,g,j) in the pre-monsoon (−0.09 ◦C/decade) and winter (−0.09 ◦C/decade) compared to the monsoon (−0.07 ◦C/decade), and post-monsoon season (−0.06 ◦C/decade) (Table 1)
In the pre-monsoon and winter season, the Tmax increased at a rate of 0.06 and 0.11 ◦C/decade, respectively, which is smaller than Tmin (0.15 and 0.20 ◦C/decade, respectively) (Table 1)
Summary
The surface air temperature is an essential climatic variable mediating the diversity of biological, physical, and chemical processes guaranteeing the sustainability of life on earth [1,2]. The observed variation in the mean temperature (Tmean) trend corresponds to either the maximum temperature (Tmax) or the minimum temperature (Tmin) trend; otherwise, it is relative to both temperature trends. Temperature Range (DTR), which measures the difference between the Tmax and Tmin, becomes an essential indicator of recent climate change [4,5]. The land-surface DTR featured a significantly decreasing trend, at a rate of −0.036 ◦C/decade between 1901 and 2014 [6]. The decreasing trend of the DTR was associated with an increase in mortality across India [10]. It has a significant impact on the growth and development of crops such as maize, wheat, and rice [11,12]
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