background and Aims: Cutaneous leishmaniosis (CL) is a neglected tropical vector-borne disease. As other vector-transmitted diseases, its transmission is sensitive to the physical environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between El Nino-SOUTHERN OSCILLATION (ENSO) and annual incidence of CL in Iran.Materials and Methods: The data of ENSO were obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center for the period 1977-2011 (34 years), and the annual data on CL incidence in Iran from WHO. To determine the association between the ENSO annual fluctuations and annual CL incidence we used crosstab analysis and tow-tailed independent t-test to find any possible differences among the annual CL incidence according to different phases of the SOUTHERN OSCILLATION Index (SOI: El Nino, warming phase; La Nina, cooling phase; neutral phase).Results: Analysis of the data showed that, as compared with the years when El Nino and La Nina were dominant, the annual incidence of CL in Iran was lower in the years when neutral phases of SOI were dominant. The highest incidence was found to have occurred during the years with an intermediate La Nina dominance. During the years when La Nina was dominant the incidence of CL was, on the average, 15-20% higher than that in the years with a neutral phase, while the difference between the annual CL incidence in neutral years and El Niño years was not statistically significant.Conclusion: The findings reveal that in general the mean incidence of cutaneous leishmaniosis during the years with a neutral ENSO index is lower than that during the years with dominant El Nino or La Nina, although there is no difference between incidence in the neutral years and the El Nino-dominant years.

The study of climate change is pre-requisite for preparedness and mitigating the costs of such a change. In Iran, there is a little literature dealing with the identification of climate change in percipitation time series. Moreover, literature investigating the relationship between change point in climatic time series and Oceanic-Atmospheric Phenomenon was not found for Iran. The Mann-Whitney and cumulative sum tests were, therefore, conducted to reveal possible change point in percipitation (annual, biannual and seasonal) time series over SOUTHERN and southwestern parts of Iran for the period 1951-1999. The results have indicated that the change point is mostly centered over the first half of the 1970s. It was shown that compared to the era before 1975, annual rainfall has increased for the period after this year for all sites studied. While rainfall in Shabankareh, Bandar Abbas and Bandar Lengeh has experienced the highest percentage of increase, the lowest increase rate has occurred in Boushehr and Shoushtar. In seasonal scale, although the percipitation has considerably increased during cold seasons (autumn and winter), the decline in spring and summer rain is a notable feature of climate change over the studied sites. In monthly scale, the highest increase rate (after 1975) was found for March. It has been found that the change point is SOI data is approximately coincided with the point in percipitation time series. The study has concluded that the recent increase in the frequency and duration of warm ENSO (El Nino SOUTHERN OSCILLATION) events is associated with positive trend in cold season percipitation over central south and southwestern parts of Iran.

Changing ozone layer which is measured as Total ozone (TO) OSCILLATION name, are one of the modern human concerns as one of the causes or impacts of climate change. In this research, Total ozone OSCILLATION in relationship with ENSO phenomena have been evaluated. To this aim, monthly mean data from Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) in point by 1*1.25 degree of geographical distance and monthly mean SOUTHERN OSCILLATION index (SOI) as defining as El Nino and La Nina have been used. The results show that total ozone variations have the best fit to SOI index by Regression Cubic model and the total ozone could be estimated by this model on confidence level 99%. The relation between ozone values estimated by the model and the SOI index is inverse, strong and confidence in level significant 99% in annual, seasonal and monthly time scale in all aresa of Iran except a small area in the North West in July. Correlation coefficients were the strongest in the Central Region, South and Southeast of the country and the poor relations in the North and North West respectively. The results show that the total ozone in El Nino\La Nina occurrence will increase\decrease in all Iran areas. The value of (TO) increase from the south to north and the fitted line slope in El Nino is more.

Background and Objective: Malaria is a disease affecting 300–500 million people in tropical and subtropical regions and causes approximately 2.7 million deaths annually. Currently, no vaccine protects against malaria and resistance to anti-malaria drugs such as chloroquine is increasing and spreading geographically. Moreover, anti-malarial drugs are expensive and often unaffordable to low-income populations. A better understanding of the relationship between the El Nino SOUTHERN OSCILLATION (ENSO), the climatic anomalies it engenders, and malaria epidemic could help mitigate the world-wide increase in incidence of this mosquito transmitted disease. There is evidence of a relationship between climate variability and the transmission of mosquito-transmitted diseases. Therefore, in this study we intended to analyze the relationship between ENSO events and annual malaria occurrence (AMO) in Iran to assess the possibility of using ENSO forecasts for improving malaria control.Martials and Methods: Two types of data were used: The data of annual malaria incidence in Iran were collected from the national and international reports of malaria occurrence in Iran; the annual malaria occurrence data for 38 years (1974- 2013) were collected from related sources. ENSO is a cyclic phenomenon, which its frequency is 2 to 7 years (i.e., irregular) and is the second strongest natural driver of climate variability, the first being normal seasonal variability. This OSCILLATION has two different phases: a warm episode known as El Nino; and a cold episode called La Niña, where warm and cold refer to the direction of departure from average of the equatorial Pacific Sea surface temperature (SST), a fundamental indicator of the ENSO state. The Pearson correlation analysis at 0.95 confident level (P-value=0.05) on monthly timescale was used in order to understand the relationship between ENSO and annual malaria occurrence in Iran. The 2-tailed independent parametric T-test was used knowing that whether there is a significant difference between the La Nina years occurrence and El Nino years occurrence.Results: The results indicated that a slight negative association could be detected between ENSO and annual Malaria occurrence in Iran. Our finding showed that the detected correlation between monthly ENSO and annual malaria occurrence is statistically significant only in months October and May while no significant relationship between ENSO and AMO at 0.95 confident level was found for other months.. The inverse relationship between ENSO and AMO means that the years having higher malaria occurrence coincides with the warm ENSO phases or EL Nino episode while the years having lower malaria occurrence coincides with the cool ENSO phases or La Nina episode. In El Nino episode, the annual occurrence of malaria is about 0.2 to 0.3 higher than La Niña episode years.Conclusion: The positive association between El Nino and rainfall of Iran resulted in higher occurrence of malaria by proliferation of Anopheles mosquito especially in SOUTHERN and southeastern region of Iran.

Flood forecasting and the study of the factors involved in flood events form important issues of concern in water resources management. In recent years, the influence of large-scale global climate phenomena on flood peaks has attracted more attention. In this paper, the effect of El Nino-SOUTHERN OSCILLATION (ENSO) is investigated on annual maximum flood (AMF) in Iran’s southwestern basins. The basins are located upstream of Dez and Karun-I dams. ENSO effects on probability, magnitude, and intensity (probability times magnitude) of AMF in the Esfand-Farvardin (March-April) period are examined. The results indicate that following El Nino, the probability of an AMF occurrence larger than the AMF corresponding to neutral ENSO conditions is higher in the study period. The opposite is true for La Nina conditions. It is also seen that El Nino effects are more intense than those of La Nina period.

Introduction: Iran’s precipitation mainly affects by air masses that arrive to it from adjacent area directly or affects as teleconnection pattern due to remoteness from water sources. Due to irregular arrival of the air masses to Iran and far distance to teleconnection centers, occurrence of precipitation variations is one of the prominent characteristics of Iran’s climate. Also due to short period of instrumental data in the meteorological stations, there is no possibility for understanding of the climatic variations during the last centuries. Reconstruction of climatic variations based on current evidences, shows a more realistic understanding of the climatic variations of the region. Trees are the useful climatic evidences that experience different climatic situation of temperature and precipitation during their life period and the effects of these climatic variations is reflected in their tissues. In temperate climates, trees add a ring annually to their previous rings. Therefore, by studying of the tree-ring widths, useful climatic information can be obtained over the last centuries of the region. In the previous studies, relationship between the SOUTHERN OSCILLATION Index (SOI) and Iran’s precipitation only has been studied in a relatively short period due to the lack of instrumental data. In this study, we present a longer period of relationship between monthly precipitations of the region with SOUTHERN OSCILLATION Index (SOI) by reconstruction of precipitation based on Oak tree rings in the central Zagros region over the last centuries (1705-2010).Methodology: In the present paper, three sites of Oak species with a short distance to the meteorological stations were selected in Lorestan (Shineh), Kermanshah (Faryadras) and Ilam (Dalab) provinces. In Shineh and Faryadras sites Quercus infectoria species and in Dalab site Quercus Persica species used for sampling. Two increment cores at different sides of each tree were extracted by a Suunto increment borer at breast high. In each site 10 to 14 trees were sampled. After air drying, the surface of cores was prepared by a razor blade. The ring widths were measured with a LINTAB5 measuring system with a resolution of 0.01 mm, and all cores were cross-dated by visual and statistical tests (sign-test and t-test) using the software package TSAP-Win. Raw ring widths were standardized by ARSTAN program to remove non climatic signals. Three site chronologies were obtained from the three sites. To increase the length of the chronology and due to the same trends and high correlations between the three site chronologies, all growth curves were combined and the regional chronology was calculated. The values of mean sensitivity (MS), signal to noise ratio (SNR) and first auto correlation (AC1) were calculated for the regional chronology. Mean monthly precipitation of Khorramabad (1951-2010), Kermanshah (1951-2010) and Ilam (1987-2010) meteorological stations were used to calibrate the tree-ring/climate relationship. Due to the high correlation (p<0.01) between the regional chronology and mean monthly precipitation of the region, October-May, precipitation of the region was reconstructed using a linear regression model. For investigation of relationship between the reconstructed wet years and the El Nino events, Historical El Nino events from 18th century to present were obtained from NOAA database. The longest value of SOI (1876-2010) was obtained from Bureau meteorological station. Finally the relationship between October-May monthly values of SOI and the reconstructed October-May precipitation of central Zagros was investigated in the common period (1877-2010).Discussion: Similar growth patterns of trees in the three sites indicate that they influence by the same growth factors. Relationship and correlations between monthly precipitation and the regional chronology showed that precipitation has positive effect on tree growths in the region. The positive correlation with precipitation during the pre-growing season show the fact that precipitation during these months provides moisture availability in semi-arid regions and favors formation of early wood cells, which account for the majority of the total ring-width (Liu et al., 2011). Compression between the reconstructed precipitation and the actual precipitation of the central Zagros region shows some years with inconsistency between observed and reconstructed data. Most of the reconstructed wet years have been occurred coincidence with El Nino events. There is a negative relationship between the reconstructed October-May precipitation of central Zagros and SOUTHERN OSCILLATION Index (SOI). It should be noted that negative values of SOI indicate El Niño events and during the El Niño phases precipitation in most parts of Iran is above average. According to this, SOUTHERN OSCILLATION Index (SOI) during October to May has positive effect on precipitation in central Zagros. The highest correlation (p<0.01) between SOI and the reconstructed precipitation was found on November and December which is supported by the results of Azizi (2000), Yarahmadi and Azizi (2007) and Khoshakhlagh (1998). Also there is a significant correlation (p<0.05) between SOI and the reconstructed precipitation in April and May. It may be due to the far distance between the study region and the El Nino origin. Therefore the study region during April-May influence by El Nino with a lag time.Conclusion: The length of the regional chronology is 305 years (1705-2010). Total and monthly precipitations from October to May have positive effect on tree growths in the region. The results showed that dry conditions occurred in 1730s, 1760s-1790s, 1810s, 1840s-1850s, 1870s-1880s, 1900s, 1920s, 1940s, 1960s and 1980s. Comparison of wet years and historical El Nino events showed that 77 of reconstructed wet years have occurred with El Nino events simultaneously. Investigation of relationship between the SOUTHERN OSCILLATION Index (SOI) and the reconstructed October-May precipitation of the central Zagros region showed that SOI has positive effect on precipitation in the region. The highest negative correlation between the SOUTHERN OSCILLATION Index (SOI) and the reconstructed precipitation was found in December. The highest correlation (p<0.01) between SOI and the reconstructed precipitation of the region was found in November, December and January. There was a significant correlation (p<0.05) between SOI and the reconstructed precipitation in April and May as well.

The Malaria is endemic disease that has been broken out from old times in Iran. The outbreak of this illness is affected by economic, social and cultural problems, especially environmental conditions. In this study, It correlation between annual changes of patient cases and SOI index in Iran during 1990-2007 period and, monthly changes for Chabahar city during 1382-1387, have been analyzed. In this regard, values of annual rain in Iran during a statistical period (1990-2007) and monthly and annual rain of Chabahar during (1382-1387) were used that obtained from Iran meteorological organization and meteorology station of Chabahr respectively. The monthly and annual SOI index data was taken from NOAA. The results showed that SO accident negative phase (Elnino), which accompanied with increasing precipitation in this country, is matched by decrease of Malaria cases and that in years which positive phases (Lanina) occurred, Malaria cases increased. But in Chabahar city, this situation is inverse. This means that, negative and positive phases of SOUTHERN OSCILLATION are accompanied with decreasing and increasing rain respectively. So, Elnino increased malaria cases and Lanina decreased it in Chabahr.