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Spatial changes in climate across Mongolia

Date

2015-06

Authors

Venable, Niah B. H., author
Fassnacht, Steven R., author
Hendricks, Alyssa D., author
Nutag Action and Research Institute, publisher

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

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Abstract

Previous research using meteorological station data suggests that temperatures and precipitation have been changing more across the semi-arid and arid country of Mongolia than in many other locations across the globe. We used gridded monthly data to determine the annual and seasonal rate of change in total precipitation (P), maximum temperature (Tmax), and minimum temperature (Tmin), as computed from the non-parametric Thiel-Sen slope estimator method. The significance of those changes were computed from the Mann-Kendall test. The University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) dataset was used for the 50-year time period from 1963 through 2012 at a 0.5 degree (~55 km) resolution. For the first 30 years, 30 to 35 meteorological stations from across Mongolia were used to create the spatially distributed "High Resolution Gridded Data of Month-by-Month Variation in Climate" CRU product; 20 to 30 stations were used for the last 20 years due to a decrease in the number of operational stations. Results are presented as maps of 1) mean total annual P, and mean annual Tmax and Tmin, and ii) annual trends over the length of record (1963-2012) with significance overlain, for the three variables. Rates of change at annual and seasonal time scales varied spatially with more consistent increases in temperature; significant precipitation trends were observed over smaller areas than significant temperature trends.

Description

Includes bibliographical references.
Presented at the Building resilience of Mongolian rangelands: a trans-disciplinary research conference held on June 9-10, 2015 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

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Subject

Mongolia
climate change
Mann-Kendall
Thiel-Sen
gridded climate variables
trend analyses

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