Drought trends projection under future climate change scenarios for Iran region

Based on the assumptions of the IDW interpolation, features are indistinguishable if they are placed close to each other compared to the ones farther apart. The IDW strategy has been sug- gested to be used for data with a short range of variation [36]. It is obvious from Fig 3 that the Southern part of Iran has higher PET values (ranges from 124.1 to 145.6 mm/month) than the northern part (ranges from 82.47 to 104 mm/month). Comparing the future PET under the scenarios indicate that the trend of spatial changes of PET under the A2 and A1B scenarios are similar to the PET in the base period, whereas there is a narrow margin between the PET changes under the B1 scenario and the base period. Nev- ertheless, the increasing trend of the PET in the three scenarios to the base timescale is trans- parent. These findings are reported by [36] that can confirm the current consequences. However, the spatial distribution of the precipitation pattern is completely the reverse of the PET, which is reasonably due to the identity of both the parameters. Contrary to the PET val- ues, the lowest precipitation falls in the south-eastern parts of the country. This is noticeable that the category related to the highest precipitation under the A2 scenario is significantly less Table 2. The results of LARS-WG test in prediction of weather variables after calibration in the base period. Precipitation Tmin Tmax Station NRMSE MBE NRMSE MBE NRMSE MBE Ahvaz 3.90 -0.73 3.82 -0.71 0.03 -0.01 Arak 9.11 -2.32 0.56 0.04 0.33 0.07 Ardebil 7.03 -1.63 2.92 0.09 1.53 0.24

Bandar abas 4.37 0.61 0.38 0.03 0.49 0.16 Birjand 9.19 -1.19 0.70 0.06 0.73 0.18 Bojnoord 3.23 -0.7 0.57 -0.04 0.61 0.12 Boshehr 10.82 -2.46 0.19 0.04 0.70 0.21 Esfahan 14.37 -1.57 0.31 0.03 0.08 0.02 Ghazvin 2.98 0.76 0.01 0.01 0.23 0.05 Ghom 5.30 -0.69 0.58 -0.06 0.54 0.14 Gorgan 0.31 0.13 0.08 0.01 1.03 0.24 Hamedan 0.43 0.11 0.01 0.01 0.20 0.04 Ilam 11.26 -5.24 0.45 -0.05 0.49 0.11 Karaj 1.63 -0.34 0.33 0.03 0.01 0.01 Kerman 10.06 -1.09 0.67 -0.05 0.23 0.06 Kermanshah 3.04 -1.02 0.42 0.03 0.42 0.1 Khoram abad 11.11 -4.4 0.46 -0.04 0.43 0.11 Mashhad 0.19 -0.04 0.33 0.03 0.45 0.1 Oroomie 7.79 1.92 1.14 -0.06 0.67 0.12 Rasht 0.53 -0.56 0.57 -0.07 0.43 0.09 Sanandaj 3.13 -1 1.12 -0.07 0.27 0.06 Semnan 6.15 -0.73 1.02 -0.13 0.25 0.6 shahrekord 5.74 -1.57 2.93 -0.08 0.35 0.07 Shiraz 10.91 -3 0.63 -0.07 0.34 0.09 Tabriz 5.28 -1.05 1.53 0.12 0.63 0.12 Tehran 3.74 -0.74 0.15 0.02 0.60 0.14 Yasooj 9.43 -6.55 0.38 -0.03 0.39 0.09 Yazd 2.24 -0.10 0.39 -0.05 0.44 0.12 Zahedan 5.78 -0.37 1.38 0.15 0.81 0.22 Zanjan 6.17 -1.43 0.48 -0.02 0.71 0.13 Total 7.9 -1.233 1.4 -0.028 0.50 0.108 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290698.t002 PLOS ONE Drought trends projection under future climate change scenarios for Iran region PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290698 November 9, 2023 8 / 24