Trends of summer daily maximum temperature extremes in Turkey

Abstract

This work seeks to understand the variability of warm and cool events during summer in Turkey. Daily maximum air temperature data from 97 weather stations were analyzed to determine percentile threshold values (99th, 95th, 90th, 1st, 5th, and 10th) at each station. Trends in the percentile values were determined using the Mann-Kendall trend test. The analysis demonstrates an increase in frequency of warm, hot, and extremely hot days, whereas cool, cold, and extremely cold days show a decreasing trend. Increasing trends are statistically significant at the 0.05 and 0.01 levels for 13 and 46% of the stations, respectively. Significant decreasing trends have been detected at 0.05 and 0.01 levels for 19 and 15% of 97 stations, respectively. Analysis of the observations shows that the number of warm and hot event started to increase in the 1970s. Warm events are comparatively more numerous than cold events in western and southern parts of the country.