Analysis of Monthly Precipitation at the Basin Scale in Türkiye

Basin-based water management strategy is one of the necessary instruments for the protection and sustainable use of water resources against climate change. In this paper, the monthly precipitation distributions of the 25 major basins in Türkiye were produced, and amounts and volumes were computed and analyzed. Only annual modeling and assessments of precipitation may hide months with precipitation shortages. Empirical Bayesian Kriging (EBK), Ordinary Kriging (OK), and Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) were implemented in interpolation. EBK outperformed in all months and calculations were based on the EBK. The month with the highest precipitation potential in Türkiye is December (77.9 mm, 60.77 billion m3), and the month with the lowest precipitation potential is August (13.8 mm, 10.76 billion m3). In the basins, the monthly precipitation amounts range between 2.7 mm and 185.2 mm, and the volumes range between 0.02 billion m3 and 13.24 billion m3. The basins with the highest precipitation depth were determined as the East Black Sea, Antalya, Asi, and Ceyhan, and the lowest as the Small Menderes, Konya, and Tigris-Euphrates in different months. The monthly precipitation patterns and potentials of the basins vary widely. In May, June, July, August, and September, when water, particularly agricultural irrigation, is required the most, the 20 basins, except for the 5 located in Northern Türkiye precipitation shortage was determined.