Changes in daily temperature and precipitation extremes in central and south Asia

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres Vol. 111; no. D16; pp. D16105 - n/a
• Main Authors: Klein Tank, A. M. G., Peterson, T. C., Quadir, D. A., Dorji, S., Zou, X., Tang, H., Santhosh, K., Joshi, U. R., Jaswal, A. K., Kolli, R. K., Sikder, A. B., Deshpande, N. R., Revadekar, J. V., Yeleuova, K., Vandasheva, S., Faleyeva, M., Gomboluudev, P., Budhathoki, K. P., Hussain, A., Afzaal, M., Chandrapala, L., Anvar, H., Amanmurad, D., Asanova, V. S., Jones, P. D., New, M. G., Spektorman, T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Geophysical Union 27-08-2006; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Atmosphere; central and south Asia; climate change; Climate variability; Earth sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; Global Change; indices of daily climate extremes; Regional climate change; Asia; South Asia; Asia, South; indices of daily climate extremes; central and south Asia; climate change; Dynamical climatology; trend-surface analysis; Meteorological station; atmospheric precipitation; extreme value; Regional scope; warming; Minimum temperature; Maximum temperature; climate; Long term; Climate variation
• ISSN: 0148-0227; 2156-2202
• DOI: 10.1029/2005JD006316

Changes in indices of climate extremes are studied on the basis of daily series of temperature and precipitation observations from 116 meteorological stations in central and south Asia. Averaged over all stations, the indices of temperature extremes indicate warming of both the cold tail and the warm tail of the distributions of daily minimum and maximum temperature between 1961 and 2000. For precipitation, most regional indices of wet extremes show little change in this period as a result of low spatial trend coherence with mixed positive and negative station trends. Relative to the changes in the total amounts, there is a slight indication of disproportionate changes in the precipitation extremes. Stations with near‐complete data for the longer period of 1901–2000 suggest that the recent trends in extremes of minimum temperature are consistent with long‐term trends, whereas the recent trends in extremes of maximum temperature are part of multidecadal climate variability.