The Effect of ENSO Large Scale Atmospheric- oceanic Pattern on Kashkan River Discharge

The current study investigates the effect of ENSO atmospheric-oceanic pattern as an effective factor in hydrological conditions of Kashkan River. To do so, the related data of Southern Oscillation patterns using East Angelina university website was gathered, and the statistics period of 1984-2010 was considered. The related data of Kashkan’s annual discharge was also collected using related references. Pearson coefficient analysis was used in order to analyze the monthly and annually data, with at least (p_value=0.01) 0.99% significant level. For assessing the effect of cold and warm phases of this macro-scale weather pattern, discharge’s annual data based on the mentioned monthly phases was considered and Independent two-tail t-test was run. Applying this test, the meaningfulness of differences among discharge’s annual data in cold and warm phases was investigated. Finally, the cause and atmospheric relationship between data was analyzed using Synoptic map analysis. The results show that Kashkan River’s discharge has a meaningful significant coefficient with ENSO index in October, November and December. Also the result of synoptic map analysis shows that in years with warm phase of ENSO (El-nino), autumn raining around Kashkan River increased about 26 percent over the long term. But in the cold phase autumn raining in that area had been about 10.5 percent less than the normal amount. Running the Independent two tail t-test on the annual discharge shows that in the years with warm phase of ENSO, the average amount of Kashkan River’s annual discharge has been 35 percent more than the years with cold phase of ENSO.