Temporal and Spatial Analysis of Rainfall and Evapotranspiration in Erbil Plain and the Peripheral Areas

Abstract

Since analysis of spatial events is region specific and cannot be generalized, local studies are of vital importance to identify the most accurate interpolation methods. Furthermore, the trend analysis of climatic parameters at different time scales is helpful for making a better climate change adaptation   and mitigation plan to overcome water scarcity. Accordingly, the current study was proposed to detect trends in rainfall and evapotranspiration at monthly and annual time scales over the Erbil plain and the surrounding area using parametric and non-parametric tests. Moreover, four deterministic and five geostatistical methods were evaluated for searching the best interpolation method to generate a continuous surface for the indicated climatic variables. The results revealed that the majority of data sets are categorized useful class and serially independent. Furthermore, it was found both rainfall and potential evapotranspiration have a mix of upward and downward trends and most of them are insignificant at 5% level of significance. Further, the interpolation analysis indicated that local polynomial interpolation (LPI) method was proven to be best interpolator for generating continuous surfaces for rainfall and ETo over the area under study followed by the empirical Bayesian Kriging method.

Keywords

• keywords: climatic variables,,
• ,،trend analysis,,
• ,،interpolation methods,,
• ,،erbil plain,,
• ,،topsis