Temperature Trend over Nile Delta, Egypt in 20th Century
Maged M. A. Hussein *
Department of Physical Oceanography, National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Alexandria, Egypt
Ebtisam E. E. Mohamed
Department of Shore Processing, National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Alexandria, Egypt
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Air temperature time series of Nile Delta, Egypt was statistically analyzed in order to answer the question whether recent climate change can be proved for Nile delta, Egypt; the results were compared and discussed with the global trends. The observations for the Alexandria, Port Said and Cairo stations started in the 1900-2010, 1900-1947 and 1957-2010 have been used in this study. Statistical methods were applied, such as: Trend analysis (linear regression model) including the trend-to-noise-ratio as measure of significance and the non-parametric Mann-Kendall test for trends. According to the results of the analyses, climate change in Nile Delta is clearly shown for temperature during (1900–2010): Annual mean temperatures increased at all stations during 1900-1947 (from 1.23°C at Alexandria to 2.34°C at Cairo) than 1957-2010 (from 0.55°C at Port Said to 1.37°C at Cairo). The magnitude of climate change is illustrated to increase over the period 1970–2010, i.e. annual mean temperature increased from 0.98 °C at Alexandria to 1.68°C at Cairo. Seasonally, the highest warming trends were observed for summer temperatures and also increasing temperature trends detected with different magnitude in the remainder seasons. Cairo station represents the highest seasonal trend for all seasons with respect to the other two stations.
Keywords: Nile Delta, air temperature, Mann-Kendall, non-parametric test, linear regression, climate change