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Investigation of extreme precipitation indices in Turkey

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Abstract

This paper focuses on spatiotemporal characteristics of precipitation indices of Turkey’s precipitation data for the periods 1966–2014. Seven precipitation indices include the number of extremely wet days, very wet days, heavy precipitation days (10 mm and 20 mm), simple daily intensity days, and consecutive dry and wet days. The indices are based on homogenized precipitation data. Besides, long-term changes and trends in the time series of precipitation indices in terms of climatic variability were investigated using nonparametric time series analysis methods. The results obtained are summarized as follows. Extremely wet and very wet day indices include significant decreasing trends in most stations. The trend is statistically significant at some stations in the Mediterranean region and southeastern Anatolia region. The number of heavy precipitation day indices tend to decrease in most of the stations in the Mediterranean precipitation zone, throughout Turkey. Simple daily intensity index generally displays an increasing trend. Consecutive dry days include an overall upward trend throughout Turkey. The inner and in the west of southeastern Anatolia regions have displayed a statistically significant increasing trend. Consecutive humid days tend to decrease overall outside of Turkey’s internal parts. The study also examined the relationships between atmospheric oscillation indices and precipitation indices. Accordingly, the atmospheric oscillation index that has the most decisive effect on the Turkish precipitation indices is NAO.

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Data availability

We have all the raw, processed data and result products, and if it is required, we can provide the processed data and documents. However, the National Meteorological Agency does not allow us to provide raw precipitation data.

Code availability

The codes used to generate extreme precipitation indices are available, and we can submit if these codes are needed in any circumstances. Similarly, we used the XLSTAT Microsoft Excel add-in software, which is an open source to generate homogeneity and trend magnitude.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Turkish State of Meteorological Office for providing the daily precipitation data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Çanakkale, Turkey

    Zahide Acar

  2. Department of Geography, Faculty of Letters, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Barbaros Gönençgil

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  1. Zahide Acar
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  2. Barbaros Gönençgil
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Zahide Acar and Barbaros Gönençgil.

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Correspondence to Zahide Acar.

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Acar, Z., Gönençgil, B. Investigation of extreme precipitation indices in Turkey. Theor Appl Climatol 148, 679–691 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-03971-3

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