Temporal and spatial temperature variability and change over Spain during 1850–2005

Abstract

[1] We analyze temporal and spatial patterns of temperature change over Spain during the period 1850-2005, using daily maximum (T max ), minimum (T min ), and mean (T mean ) temperatures from the 22 longest and most reliable Spanish records. Over mainland Spain, a significant (at 0.01 level) warming of 0.10°C/decade is found for the annual average of T mean . Autumn and winter contributed slightly more than spring and summer to the annual warming over the 1850-2005 period. The overall warming is also associated with higher rates of change for T max than T min (0.11°versus 0.08°C/decade for . This asymmetric diurnal warming increased in the twentieth century (0.17°versus 0.09°C/decade during 1901 -2005). Nevertheless, at many (few) individual stations, the difference between T max and T min is not statistically significant over 1850-2005 (1901-2005). Principal Component Analysis has been carried out to identify spatial modes of Spanish long-term temperature variability . Three principal spatial patterns are found, Northern Spain, Southeastern and Eastern Spain, and Southwestern Spain. All three patterns show similar significant warming trends. The overall warming has been more associated with reductions in cold extremes, as opposed to increases in warm extremes. Estimated trends in the number of moderately extreme cold days (T max < 10th percentile) and moderately extreme cold nights (T min < 10th percentile) show significant reductions of 0.74 and 0.54 days/decade, respectively, over 1850-2005. Moderately extreme warm days and nights (T max and T min > 90th percentile) increased significantly but at lower rates of 0.53 and 0.49 days/decade.

Drought Trends in the Iberian Peninsula over the Last 112 Years

“…According to previous works, and similar to other regions, the IP suffered nonmonotonic temperature changes during this period, with a warming period prevailing until the 1930s reported by Coll et al [26] and again from the 1970s onwards [26,43,44]. A cooling period in between these two periods was also reported by Ramos et al [43] and Brunet et al [44], and since these temperature changes may influence the drought analysis performed by SPEI, we decided to split the 112-year period into 3 smaller periods that reflected the warming and cooling subperiods with approximately the same length: 1901-1937, 1938-1974, and 1975.…”

“…In particular, when assessed on a long-term period, global temperature trends present breakpoints around the years 1945 and 1975, corresponding to the start and ending dates of a cooling period, preceded and succeeded by two warming periods [40,41]. These temperatures breakpoints have been identified in studies at a continental scale in Europe [42] and at a country scale in Portugal [43] and Spain [44], and their effect on drought trends should be taken into consideration.…”

Spatiotemporal variability of precipitation total series over Turkey

“…On the other hand, PCA is a black-box computation method that the signs or scaling of them brings no physical description of the local-climate systems (details may be found in Preisendorfer, 1988;Wilks, 1995;Tatli et al, 2004Tatli et al, , 2005Brunet et al, 2007).…”

“…A glance at the Mediterranean regional winter precipitation trends reveals a more detailed picture of the general findings. Some examples of the regional studies dealing with precipitation changes and trends of the Mediterranean region are as follows: Kutiel et al (1996); Brunetti et al (2001); Ramos (2001); Brunet et al (2007);Feidas et al (2007); and for Turkey, Türkeş (1996Türkeş ( , 1998Türkeş ( , 1999Türkeş ( , 2003; Kutiel et al (2001); Türkeş et al (2002a; Erlat (2003, 2005) Türkeş (1996Türkeş ( , 1998, considering the seasonal variability of precipitation and physical geographic characteristics of Turkey (Figure 1). …”

Trends in Mediterranean gridded temperature extremes and large-scale circulation influences

“…Moreover, the changes are not always steady or monotonic. Thus, other studies have focused on particular subregions of the Mediterranean such as Spain (Brunet et al, 2007;Rodríguez-Puebla et al, 2010), Italy (Baldi et al, 2006;Bartolini et al, 2008;Toreti and Desiato, 2008), Eastern Mediterranean (Founda et al, 2004;Kostopoulou and Jones, 2005;Kuglitsch et al, 2010), and the Levant and northern parts of Egypt and Libya (Domroes and El-Tantawi, 2005;Zhang et al, 2005;Sensoy et al, 2007;El Kenawy et al, 2009).…”