Spatial changes of Extended De Martonne climatic zones affected by climate change in Iran.

In order to better understand the effect associated with global climate change on Iran's climate condition, it is important to quantify possible shifts in different climatic types in the future. To this end, monthly mean minimum and maximum temperature, and precipitation from 181 synoptic meteorological stations (average 1970-2005) have been collected from the meteorological organization of Iran. In this paper, to study spatial changes of Iran's climatic zones affected by climate changes, Extended De Martonne's classification (originally formulated by De Martonne and extended by Khalili ()) was used. Climate change scenarios were simulated in two future climates (average conditions during the 2050s and the 2080s) under each of the SRES A1B and A2, for the CSIRO-MK3, HadCM3, and CGCM3 climate models. Coarse outputs of GCMs were downscaled by delta method. We produced all maps for three time periods (one for the current and two for the future) according to Extended De Martonne's classification. Finally, for each climatic zone, changes between the current and the future were compared. As the main result, simulated changes indicate shifts to warmer and drier zones. For example, in the current, extra arid-cold ( A1.1m2) climate is covering the largest area of the country (21.4 %), whereas in both A1B and A2 scenarios in the 2050s and the 2080s, extra arid-moderate ( A1.1m3) and extra arid-warm ( A1.1m4) will be the climate and will occupy the largest area of the country, about 21 and 38 %, respectively. This analysis suggests that the global climate change will have a profound effect on the future distribution of severe aridity in Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]