The global warming has been constant subject everywhere on the planet. This increase in temperature generates a series of social, economic and environmental complications. Thinking about it, this study aims to analyze the trends of the indices of climate extremes annual temperature dependent on the region of the Lower Colorado River Basin located in the southwestern United States and thereby investigate the possible impacts of recent climate variability on the study area during the 1970 to 2009 period. Temperature data were obtained from 81 meteorological stations in the region of the Lower Colorado River Basin, comprising the States of Arizona, California, Nevada, southwestern part of New Mexico and the southwestern part of Utah. The calculation of extreme air temperature indices was obtained by the RClimdex software. From the analyzed climatic indices of temperature it was found that the summer days (SD) index contributed to the hottest days in the study area. The tropical nights (NT) index showed an increase on the number of days with minimum temperature above 20° C. The number of cold days reduced and the minimum values of maximum and minimum temperatures have increased. On the other hand, the maximum value of the maximum temperature did not indicate a tendency pattern with statistical significance.
RClimdex; climate change; LCRB.
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