Recent trends of mean maximum and minimum air temperatures in the western half of Iran

In this study, the trends of the annual, seasonal and monthly maximum (T _max) and minimum (T _min) air temperatures time series were investigated for 20 stations in the western half of Iran during 1966?C2005. Three statistical tests including Mann?CKendall, Sen??s slope estimator and linear regression were used for the analysis. The annual T _max and T _min series showed a positive trend in 85% of the stations and a negative trend in 15% of the stations in the study region. The highest increase of T _max and T _min values were obtained over Kermanshah and Ahwaz at the rates of (+)0.597°C/decade and (+)0.911°C/decade, respectively. On the seasonal scale, the strongest increasing trends were identified in T _max and T _min data in summer. The highest numbers of stations with positive significant trends occurred in the monthly T _max and T _min series in August. In contrast, the lowest numbers of stations with significant positive trends were observed between November and March. Overall, the results showed similar increasing trends for the study variables, although T _min generally increased at a higher rate than T _max in the study period.