Analysis of Precipitation Fluctuations in the Urmia Lake Basin Using the SMK Method in the Period 1986-2015

In this study, in order to analyze the trends of annual precipitation, the information from 21 synoptic meteorological stations located in the Urmia Lake basin in a 30-year time period (1986-2015) was used. For this purpose, the Sequential Mann-Kendall test was used. The date of sudden change (if exist) in the precipitation time series of each station was identified. Significance of the trend in each of the time series and its direction (decrease or increase) in each of the stations were tested at 0.05 level. The results showed that 10 out of the 21 stations had a significant decreasing trend. Three stations (Sarab, Bostanabad and Sardasht) had significant increasing trends. Precipitation trends of eight stations were insignificant. Also, the study of sudden breaking points in the annual rainfall time series of the selected stations revealed that about 57.143 percent of the stations (12 stations) showed a significant sudden change in their annual rainfall series. In other words, more than half of the selected stations exhibited a sudden change in their time series. The date of the sudden change of precipitation in eight stations (namely, Bonab, Sarab, Urmia, Oshnavieh, Kahrizi, Miyandoab, Bokan and Saghez) belonged to the middle part of the time series (i.e. 1996-2005). The sudden change date of t hree stations (namely, Sardasht, Nagade and Tekab) belonged to the first decade of time series (i.e. 1986-1995) and only the sudden change date of one station (namely, Maragheh) belonged to the last decade of time series (i.e. 2006-2015).