Focus on relative humidity trend in Iran and its relationship with temperature changes during 1960–2005

Masoud Noshadi () and Hossein Ahani ()

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2015, vol. 17, issue 6, 1469 pages

Abstract: In this research, the mean relative humidity (RH) trend was investigated in the monthly, seasonal and annual timescales during 1960–2005 in 32 synoptic meteorological stations. The Mann–Kendall test after the removal of the significant lag-1 serial correlation effect from the RH time series by pre-whitening was used to determine significant trends. Sen’s slope estimator was used to determine the median slope of positive or negative RH trends in seasonal and annual timescales. Also, in order to facilitate trend analysis and exploring in datasets, 10-year moving average low-pass filter was applied on mean annual normalized RH. Furthermore, smoothed time series by the mentioned filter were classified in four clusters and then they were mapped to show the spatial distribution of trend patterns in Iran. Results showed both significant downward and upward trends, but the number of negative trends was more than positive ones. In general, the stations located in arid central and eastern parts of country had more negative trends. Results of the Sen’s slope estimator showed that in annual timescale, Gorgan synoptic station had the most increasing slope by (+) 2 % per decade, while the most negative slope was detected in Bam by (−) 2.79 % per decade. Also, the analysis of smoothed time series of RH and their relationship with smoothed temperatures showed a strong inverse relationship particularly after 1995. It can be concluded that alongside the increasing of temperature in many parts of Iran, lack of sufficient water vapor has led to decreasing trend of RH in the country. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Climate change; Mean relative humidity; Mann–Kendall; Trend; Iran (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10668-014-9615-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:endesu:v:17:y:2015:i:6:p:1451-1469

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

DOI: 10.1007/s10668-014-9615-9

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().