Ocean–atmosphere circulation coherences associated with temperature increase in Pakistan

• Published in: Environmental Research Letters
• Main Authors: Azfar Hussain, Ishtiaq Hussain, Shaukat Ali, Waheed Ullah, Abolfazl Rezaei, Safi Ullah, Haider Abbas, Asima Manzoom, Jinxing Zhou, Jianhua Cao
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 2023
• Subjects: temperature; Atlantic and Pacific teleconnections; wavelet coherence; ENSO; global warming; Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering; TD1-1066; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Science; Q; Physics; QC1-999; Arctic; Kendall; Pacific; Global warming; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acee99; https://doaj.org/article/47af3501614440e8a5af7307d26babd1

In recent decades, temperature variations have significantly affected the ecosystem and human livelihood in Pakistan. The wavelet analysis is employed to identify the associations between regional temperature change and global teleconnections, i.e. Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), Arctic Oscillation (AO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Tropical Northern Atlantic Index (TNA), Pacific/North American Index (PNA), North Pacific Pattern (NP), Western Pacific Index (WP), and Western Hemisphere Warm Pool (WHWP). This paper first uses monotonic modified Mann–Kendall and Sen’s slope estimator to compute the temperature changes in Pakistan and its homogenous climatic regions during 1960–2020. It is found that the temperature in Pakistan has increased significantly at 0.23 °C dec ^−1 in the last 62 years, which is also higher than the global average increase. This increase is more evident in region IV and V in spring at 0.63 and 0.43 °C dec ^−1 respectively, followed by summer and autumn. Temperature changes in Pakistan and its sub-regions are mainly associated with NP, WP and WHWP with higher mean significant coherences. Overall, temperature changes are significantly influenced by multiple interactions of global teleconnections, and these combinations indicate that the integrated influence of teleconnections can better explain the regional temperature changes. The teleconnections with broader significant influence over Pakistan are NP + WP + WHWP, followed by Pacific-based (ENSO, PDO, and PNA), and Atlantic-based (AMO, AO, and NAO) indices as revealed by the mean significant coherences of 0.82, 0.82 and 0.72 respectively. Annually, AMO, TNA and WHWP showed significant correlation with higher magnitudes of 0.44, 0.42 and 0.20 respectively, indicating the modulation effect of these teleconnections on temperature changes over Pakistan. The combined impacts from the various teleconnections represent a considerable advancement in the accuracy of ...