Temporal and Spatial Analysis of the Relationship Between Atmospheric CO₂ Concentration and Precipitation in Türkiye Based on Satellite Data

Authors : İnayet Karadaş, Tuncay Yiğit, İsmail Serkan Üncü, Mevlüt Ersoy

Pages : 42-55

Doi:10.54569/aair.1756108

View : 41 | Download : 46

Publication Date : 2025-12-23

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :The satellite-based carbon dioxide data is used in discovering any relationship between CO₂ and precipitation over Türkiye. The CO₂ data have been obtained from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission, while precipitation data were taken from Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG). Both datasets have first been brought to the same time intervals; therefore, both temporal and spatial analyses could be conducted. There is a very weak positive correlation between CO₂ and rainfall (r ≈ 0.17). This becomes strongest with a 12-month lag as determined by Linear regression, which also explains only a very small proportion of the variability (R² ≈ 0.03). These results show that changes in precipitation cannot be explained by CO₂ alone. The novelties are temporally in using satellite datasets which cover the same period for Türkiye and applying machine learning models as well as classical statistical methods. Random Forest was the best performer among the tested models (R² = 0.68), suggesting that non-linear methods can capture patterns that simple linear regression misses; however, this result should be interpreted with caution given the short time series and limited set of predictors. This research contains a new local version of an updated CO₂–precipitation relationship with an explanation of its weak role and strongly emphasizes that precipitation cannot be explained by CO2.
Keywords : CO₂ konsantrasyonu, yağış analizi, OCO-2, IMERG, iklim değişikliği, Türkiye

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