Assessment of the climate change in Mazandaran Province using Geostatistical methods

Abstract Climate change and global warming is a major threat to the environment today. Greenhouse gases and air pollution is the main cause of global warming. Mazandaran climate change is the main subject of a research work done by a group of university professor in I.R.Iran. In this research, it is attempted to study Mazandaran climate change in recent decades by geo-statistical method. For statistical analysis of long period climate data and to reveal the trends of climate change in a long term period ; precipitation, annual and monthly temperature average, annual mean of Min and Max temperature of 9 weather stations were used. Then in GIS environment maps of diverse parameters concerning climate were plotted. The results show an enhancement of the mean temperature during 1996-2005. A trend of increasing mean temperature is evident more in central region. Meanwhile in the west part of the region in the Mazandaran province, there is less changes of temperature than the other part of the regions. Study of average Min temperature shows that the number of days with temperature equal 0 to -2 ºC has been decreased in recent decade particularly in mountainous area. A decrease in days with minimum temperature of -2 is obvious in mountainous area, while Min temperature in the plain area of the province has been increased to +2 ºC. The results show that the Percentage of precipitation along the coastline has not significantly been changed in recent decades. But from the center of the province toward the coastline a trend of temperature decreasing is observed. From the central region toward the south of the province an increase in the amount of precipitation is observed. Keyword: Global warming; Climate change; Geo-Statistical; Geographical Information System; Mazandaran province.