Assessing Climate Change in the Middle East from the Perspective changes in Air Temperature, Relative Humidity and Vector Wind: Land, Sea and atmosphere Interactions

Abstract

By utilizing summertime (June-September) gridded data of air temperature (AT), relative humidity (RH) and vector wind (VW), climate change was investigated over the whole of the Middle East (ME) and its ten sub-regions for the period of 1961-2020. Although changes were detected according to each individual variable, their interrelationships are discussed to justify the physical causes of the changes. For assessing the dynamic of climate change, stability in the changes was analyzed when significant results are compared between three choices comprising A) 1961 1990 and 1991-2020, B) 1961-1970 and 2011-2020 and C) 1961-1965 and 2016-2020. We proved that AT (westerly wind and RH) has (have) been predominantly increasing (decreasing) over the study area. The greatest (smallest) frequency of significant results was associated with choice C (A) suggesting changes are on the rise. After proving that the Mediterranean Sea-based northwesterly winds are the main climate controller of the ME, a large part of the observed warming and dryness is attributed to the recent weakness in these circulations. The worrying changes were associated with some populous areas including upstream of the Nile River in Eritrea and Sudan and Euphrates and Tigers Rivers in Turkey, Caucasus regions, north of Egypt, north of Iran, Turkmenistan, Saudi-Arabia and Afghanistan. In contrast to the Mediterranean region, recent enhancements in the southerly (northerly) circulations over the Indian Ocean's northwest (Caspian Sea) have been partially compensated negative impacts of warming and dryness over some areas in Iran, Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula (south of the Sea).