Using wavelet transform to analyze the dynamics of climatic variables; to assess the status of available water resources in Iran (1961–2020)

Abstract

In recent years, the effects and consequences of climate change have shown themselves by creating irregularities and trends in the essential climatic variables. In most cases, the trend of climatic variables is associated with periodicity. In this study, the trends and periodicity of these data (precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration, and net available water (NWA) have been investigated in a period of 60 years in Iran. The Mann–Kendall trend test and Sen’s slope estimator are applied for analyzing the trend and its magnitude. Wavelet transform is used to detect the periodicity of time series and to determine the correlation between NWA and temperature, precipitation, and evapotranspiration in common periodicity. The results show that the stations located in eastern and western Iran have more significant increasing/decreasing trends. Evapotranspiration shows the highest increasing trend in most stations, followed by temperature, while NWA and precipitation have trends at lower significance levels and decreasing direction. The examination of periodicity in time series showed that, among all the studied stations, evapotranspiration has the most extended periodicity with an average length of 8.3 years, followed by NWA, temperature, and precipitation with 7.3 years, 5.8 years, and 5.5 years. The results of the correlations investigation showed that in about 80% of the stations, there is a high correlation between precipitation and NWA in the short-term periodicity and at the end of the studied period. The evapotranspiration variable in most stations has a high correlation in different periodicities with the amount of NWA.