Exploring Monthly, Seasonal and Annual Spatio-Temporal Variability of Temperature and Precipitation Series by Classical and Innovative Techniques

Climate and water are two important subjects for all living things and fields of hydrology, water resources management since their variability influences environment, economy, ecology, community’s health and sustainability. In those subjects, investigation of temperature and precipitation as spatio-temporal is so crucial for living life, sustainable development and keeping water sources from possible negative effects. In this research, a comprehensive study of spatio-temporal variability of temperature and precipitation series has been done for 12 stations in Southeastern Anatolia part of Turkiye as monthly, seasonal and annual. Spatial distributions of temperature and precipitation series have been determined by Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) and temporal variabilities have been analyzed by Mann-Kendall Test (MKT), Spearman’s Rho test (SRT), Wilcoxon test (WT), Sen’s Slope test (SST), Innovative trend significance test (ITA-ST) and graphical innovative trend analysis (G-ITA). IDW results have shown that DJF (winter) seasons are the coldest while JJA (summer) seasons are the warmest seasons. The highest precipitation rates have been recorded with DJF while the lowest rates have been found with JJA. Results of MKT, SRT and WT have shown that there has been a dominance of significant increasing trend in temperature series while a prevalence of non-significant decreasing trends in precipitation series considering a significance level of α = 0.01. SST results have indicated that almost all trend slopes are positive for temperature series while negative slopes have been frequently noted for precipitation series. ITA-ST results have shown that in 99% confidence level, significantly increasing trends dominates the temperature series and significantly decreasing trends have been detected much more in precipitation series. G-ITA has allowed to assess trends graphically and indicated a prevalence of increasing trends in temperature and dominance of decreasing trends in precipitation. In the tests, precipitation has shown a more variable behavior than temperature series. The findings of this study are expected to be beneficial for local authorities in effective water resources management and action plans.