Parisa Talaee

In this study, the trends of the annual, seasonal and monthly maximum (T max) and minimum (T min) air temperatures time series were investigated for 20 stations in the western half of Iran during 1966–2005. Three statistical tests including Mann–Kendall, Sen’s slope estimator and linear regression were used for the analysis. The annual T max and T min series showed a positive trend in 85% of the stations and a negative trend in 15% of the stations in the study region. The highest increase of T max and T min values were obtained over Kermanshah and Ahwaz at the rates of (+)0.597°C/decade and (+)0.911°C/decade, respectively. On the seasonal scale, the strongest increasing trends were identified in T max and T min data in summer. The highest numbers of stations with positive significant trends occurred in the monthly T max and T min series in August. In contrast, the lowest numbers of stations with significant positive trends were observed between November and March. Overall, the results showed similar increasing trends for the study variables, although T min generally increased at a higher rate than T max in the study period.