*4.1. Change in Temperature and Precipitation*

In the KRB, two weather stations with more than 20 years of data are available, North Salang and Taliqan. Historical data are not available for the Kunduz meteorological station (see Figure 2). North Salang is located in the upstream, in a very high altitude with high precipitation and low temperature; Taliqan lies in the lowland area near of Kunduz.

Figure 5 shows a strong and statistically significant increase in the mean annual temperature within the KRB since the 1960s by 1.45 ◦C (see Table 2). All temperatures increase; however, the increase of the winter temperature is less and not statistically significant. Precipitation shows a very strong and significant trend by −35.02% (−412.56 mm) (see Figures 6 and 7).

**Figure 5.** Mean annual, summer (J,J,A) and winter (D,J,F) temperature at station North Salang. Significant trends (α = 0.05) are depicted as solid red line.


**Table 2.** Trends in temperature and precipitation for the stations North Salang and Taliqan. Statistically significant trends are bold (all but winter of North Salang).

**Figure 6.** Mean annual precipitation at stations North Salang and Taliqan. All trends are significant t (α = 0.05) and depicted as solid red line. Please note that only 18 years of data are available for Taliqan.

**Figure 7.** Mean annual, summer (J,J,A) and winter (D,J,F) temperature at station Taliqan. All of the trends are significant (α = 0.05) and depicted as solid red line. Please note that only 18 years of data are available for Taliqan.

For the Taliqan station in the lowland, where only 18 years are available, all of the trends are significant and extreme. Mean annual temperature increased according to the data for the period from 1969 to 2019 by 2.73 ◦C and summer (+2.87 ◦C) and winter (+3.68 ◦C) temperature even more. Precipitation decreased in the same period by 57.72% (−26.03 mm). These trends have to be interpreted with caution due to the limited number of years available (see Section 5.1).
