Trend investigation and spatial analysis of Warm and Cold spells duration index based on SSPs scenarios in northwest of Iran

Nowadays, due to global warming, drought and the occurrence of cold periods and heat stress, the study of climatic variables is very important. Therefore, in this research, the long-term forecast of temperature changes in northwest Iran in the base period (1985-2014) and three periods of the near future (2021-2050), the medium future (2051-2080) and the distant future (2100- 2081) was paid. For this purpose, 2 extreme temperature indices including Warm spells duration index (WSDI) and cold spells duration index (CSDI) and Maan-Kendall trend test were used to check the changes. To predict the changes of the profiles in the future period after evaluating 7 general circulation models (GCMs) from the sixth report model series (CMIP6) from two optimal models under three socio-economic forcing scenarios including SSP1-2.6, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 was used. The spatial distribution of the trend of changes in the Warm spells duration index (WSDI) in the base period showed that its maximum core is located in the south and southwest of the region, and its amount decreases by moving towards the north and northeast. Spatial changes of the Cold spells duration index (CSDI) are characterized by its maximum cores in the western regions and around Lake Urmia and minimum cores in the central and northern regions of the study area. According to the results, the average Warm spells duration index (WSDI) and of the Cold spells duration index (CSDI) are equal to 5.53 and 3.80 days per year, respectively, and the maximum and minimum Warm spells duration index (WSDI) are 1.8 and 2.7 days, respectively Piranshahr and Parsabad stations and the maximum and minimum and the Cold spells duration index (CSDI) are also 5.7 and 1.32 days corresponding to Zarineh and Marivan stations. Examining the trend of changes also showed that in most stations, the WSDI index has an increasing trend, and this trend has become significant in some stations, but the CSDI index has a decreasing trend and is not significant in any of the stations. The evaluation of different models with different error measurement indices also showed that MRI-ESM2-0 and MPI-ESM1-2-L models have the best performance in simulating temperature extreme in the studied area. The distribution of changes in the future period also showed that the WSDI will increase in most stations and based on all three scenarios, especially the SSP5-8.5 scenario, but the CSDI trend will decrease in most stations and based on the SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios will be significant.