Abstract
Lebanon, with its geographic location facing the Mediterranean Sea and dominant rugged topography, is characterized by a strong climatic variability even between zones located few kilometres apart. The investigation of the climatic indices is necessary to delineate such diverse climatic situation over Lebanon. In this context, this paper investigates the periodic behaviour in annual Emberger aridity index (AIE) of 14 weather stations in representative sites of Lebanon. The AIE indicates that the dominant climate of Lebanon, which is mainly varying from humid to semi-arid, follows cyclonic meteorological patterns. The periodicities of AIE identified by using a robust technique seem almost altitude related and range between 2 and 21 years. The geographic distribution of periodicities implies two major zones in the northern and southern parts of Lebanon, being featured by longer and shorter periodicities, respectively. The formation of these two periodicity zones can be related to regional climatic zoning. The remarkable diversity in periodicity indicates predominant microclimates with specified cyclonic climate that characterizes Lebanon’s climate rather than a merely existence of climate change.
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This study was supported by the CNR-CNRSL Project 2017-2018.
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Appendix
Appendix
The map shown in Fig. 5 was obtained through the following steps:
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A shape file (vector data of points) was created using the coordinates of the station locations and including the periodicities as attributes;
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The radial basis function (RBF) (Wright 2003) was used for interpolating, due to its less error and more confidence in the results;
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After creating different interpolation grids (raster layers), they are classified into categories representing the periodicity of the aridity index;
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The classified grids are converted to polygons, and these polygons are refined (smoothed to be made contour like) using ArcGIS functions;
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Finally, additional manual editing is done to remove slivers and small polygons.
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Telesca, L., Shaban, A. & Awad, M. Analysis of heterogeneity of aridity index periodicity over Lebanon. Acta Geophys. 67, 167–176 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-018-00243-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-018-00243-5