TITLE:
Climate Change Trend Observations in Morocco: Case Study of Beni Mellal-Khenifra and Darâa-Tafilalt Regions
AUTHORS:
Ait Ouhamchich Kamal, Karaoui Ismail, Arioua Abdelkrim, Kasmi Atika, Elhamdouni Driss, Elfiraoui Fatima Ezzahra, Arioua Zakaria, Nazi Fatima, Nabih Nadia
KEYWORDS:
Climate Trends, Precipitation, Temperature, RClimdex, Beni Mellal-Khenifra, Darâa-Tafilalt
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.6 No.7,
July
11,
2018
ABSTRACT: Despite the extreme events impact on various climate events frequency and intensity in many developing countries, there has been dearth information on daily climate trends and climatic extremes. This study comes to characterize the climate type and its evolution in Morocco, specially the two regions Beni Mellal-Khenifra and Daraa-Tafilalt. RClimdex software has been used to calculate pluvio-thermal and ombro-thermic indices in the studied stations to reveal climate type in the two regions, their evolutions, and the daily extreme temperatures and precipitations. A cartographic representation has been done for the calculated indices and climatic trends in the stations from 1970 to 2016. As results, the temperature trend for hot day’s number shows a significant increase, while the cold night’s numbers, warm sequences, and precipitation are gradually decreases especially at Khouribga and Midelt. These observed modifications influence negatively the annual rainfall total in the year, the consecutive wet days, the maximums rainy days, and the increase of consecutively dry days. As a conclusion, the Martonne aridity and ombro-thermic indices, show that the temperatures and precipitations evolutions do not induce a change in the climate type for the studied regions.