Changes in extreme temperature and precipitation indices: Using an innovative daily homogenized database in Israel

Abstract

This study examines the 1950–2017 temporal changes in climate extremes in Israel, which is located in the East Mediterranean (EM), a region which suffers from a scarcity of long and reliable datasets. It is well known that most long‐term records are affected by artificial shifts most commonly caused by station relocation, instrumental modification and local environmental changes. Therefore, for the first time, a thorough homogenization (detection and correction) routine was developed and implemented in the long‐term records. Consequently, a new daily adjusted dataset has been generated, including 34 temperature stations and 60 precipitation stations. Based on this comprehensive dataset, 38 extreme indices recommended by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and the Expert Team on Sector‐specific Climate Indices have been calculated. These indices will help various sectors to plan properly mitigation actions and adaptation for climate change, in addition to facilitating future studies for the EM. The results showed highly significant changes in temperature extremes associated with warming, especially for those indices derived from the daily minimum temperature (TN, 1950–2017), whereas the maximum temperature (TX) exhibited a similar increasing magnitude of the TN (~0.55°C/decade) in the last 30 years. The warming trends, which are non‐monotonic, seem to have been particularly strong since the early 1990s. The coastal area is characterized by higher heat stress during the nighttime, while mountains exhibit a strong tendency towards increasing temperatures during the noon hours. A reduction in the total precipitation amount and in the number of wet days with a tendency towards more intense wet days was found. Although all the regional trends of the precipitation indices were not statistically significant (p ≤ .05), they showed a fine spatial coherence.

Spatial and temporal patterns of precipitation in Montenegro

“…Most areas were also characterized by a downward trend in the summer precipitation (Deitch et al, 2017). During this period, reduction in annual and summer precipitations has predominated over the Iberian Peninsula (Río et al, 2011;Rodrigo and Trigo, 2007), Italy (D'Oria et al, 2017), France (Dayon et al, 2018), Greece (Markonis et al, 2017), Croatia (Gajić-Čapka and Cindrić, 2011), Turkey (Çiçek and Duman, 2015), Israel (Yosef et al, 2019), etc. Over the eastern part of the Mediterranean region, trends in precipitation indices consistent with drier conditions were also found, i.e., positive trends in the maximum number of consecutive dry days and negative trends in the annual number of days with precipitation higher than 10 mm (Kostopoulou and Jones, 2005).…”

“…Increased frequency and intensity of droughts in the Mediterranean region is not just a consequence of natural variability; evidences for anthropogenically forced drying were also determined (Cook et al, 2016), among which key forcings were anthropogenic greenhouse gasses and aerosols, and the sea surface temperatures (Hoerling et al, 2012). Despite a decrease in the total precipitation, studies found an upward tendency in the extreme precipitation over many Mediterranean areas (Abbasnia and Toros, 2019;Nastos and Zerefos, 2008;Ribes et al, 2019;Yosef et al, 2019;etc.). Similar changes in precipitation were observed in the Mediterranean part of Southeast Europe where Montenegro is located.…”

Nonstationary weather and water extremes: a review of methods for their detection, attribution, and management

“…techniques are often limited to evaluating changes in the mean rather than extremes (Peña-Angulo et al, 2020;Ribeiro et al, 2016;Yosef et al, 2019).…”

Is it possible to fit extreme climate change indices together seamlessly in the era of accelerated warming?

“…The past two decades witnessed a steady increase in the application of the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) recommendations for monitoring climate extremes (including by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC; e.g., Frich et al, 2002; Aguilar et al ., 2005; Zhang et al ., 2005a; Alexander et al ., 2006; Klein Tank et al ., 2006; Vincent and Mekis, 2006; Donat et al ., 2013; Yosef et al ., 2019). The ETCCDI defined a total core set of 27 indices based on daily temperature values or daily precipitation amount.…”