The relationship between atmospheric blocking and precipitation changes in Turkey between 1977 and 2016

Bahtiyar Efe*, Anthony R. Lupo, Ali Deniz

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The relationship between blocking events and mean precipitation frequency (MPF) was investigated in this work for Turkey during 1977–2016. The overall MPF for the examined stations during blocked days (nonblocked days) fluctuated between 0.15 and 0.43 (0.12 and 0.38). The ratio of MPF during the blocked days to nonblocked days ranges between 12 and 38%. During the winter season, the country has higher MPF values during blocked days. The greatest ratio of MPF values during blocked days to nonblocked days is observed in summer due to smaller values of MPF occurring during this season overall. Higher MPF occurs when the event center was located between 0o and 30o E (mean 0.27, range 0.17–0.51). There is no relationship between blocking duration and MPF for all seasons. There is a positive relationship between blocking intensity and MPF during summer (CC = 0.35, significant at the 95% level) and fall (CC = 0.43, significant at the 95% level). The relationship between blocking longitudinal extent and MPF is significant at the 95% confidence level during the summer and fall seasons with correlation coefficients of 0.29 and 0.25, respectively. A composite of the 10 blocking events associated with the largest MPF demonstrated that there is moist advection via westerly flow into Turkey in all seasons. During winter, a greater proportion of these events is observed during the La Niña phase of El Niño Southern Oscillation, but during El Niño in spring and summer. For the blocking case study (31 October to 5 November 2009) associated with the largest MPF, the mean value across the country was 0.73. The mean total precipitation during this period was 63.4 mm.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1573-1590
Number of pages18
JournalTheoretical and Applied Climatology
Volume138
Issue number3-4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature.

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