Abstract:
Climate varies on both temporal and spatial scales across the globe. Pakistan is
also facing the changes in temperature per decade and other climatic abnormalities like
droughts and torrential rains etc. In order to assess and identify the extent of temperature
change over Pakistan, the whole Pakistan was grouped into five climatic zones raging
from very cold to hot and dry climates. Similarly, seasons in Pakistan are defined on the
basis of monsoon variability as; winter, pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon. This
study primarily focuses on the comparison of surface temperature observations from
Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) network with PRECIS (Providing Regional
Climates for Impacts Studies) model simulations. Results indicate that PRECIS
underestimates the temperature in Northern Pakistan and during winter season. However,
there exist fair agreement between PRECIS output and observed datasets in the lower
plane and hot areas of the country. An absolute increase of 0.07 ᵒC is observed in the mean
temperature over Pakistan during the time period of 1950-2010. Especially, the increase is
more significant (0.7 ᵒC) during the last fourteen years (1997-2010). Moreover,
SCIAMACHY observations of atmospheric CO2 were used to see its covariance with
temperature. CO2 levels have shown a notable increasing trend during the last decade.
