Nonstationary analysis of the extreme temperatures in Turkey

Record-breaking extreme temperatures have been measured in the last two decades all over Turkey, with recent studies detecting positive trends in extreme temperature time series. In this study, nonstationary extreme value analysis was performed on extreme temperature time series obtained from fifty stations scattered over the seven geographical regions of Turkey. Basic characterization of the data set was defined through outlier detection, homogeneity, trend detection, and stationarity tests. Trend-including non-stationary extreme temperature time series were analyzed with non-stationary Generalized Extreme Value distribution. Three main physical drivers were considered as the leading causes that trigger the observed trends in extreme temperatures over Turkey: time, teleconnection patterns of the Arctic Oscillations, and those of the North Atlantic Oscillations. The results showed that most of the absolute annual minimum and maximum temperature time series are inhomogeneous while the possible breakpoints date back to the1970s and 1990s, respectively. More than half of the absolute annual maximum time series (26/50 and many of the absolute annual minimum time series (21/50) showed a positive trend. No negative trend was detected in the extreme temperature time series. Based on the frequency analysis of the 21 annual maximum time series, the non-stationary estimations of 50-year return levels were detected to be higher than in the stationary model (between 0.44 °C and 3.73 °C). The return levels in 15 of the 20 minimum temperature time series increased from 0.11 °C up to 12.28 °C. Elevation increases the nonstationarity impact on absolute minimum temperatures and decreases it on absolute maximums. The findings in this study indicate that the consideration of non-stationarity in extreme temperature time series is a necessity during return level estimations over the study area.