In order to detect and to estimate trends of temperature change in Egypt, trend analyses applying the least‐squares method and the non‐parametric Mann–Kendall test for trends were carried out at six stations for the period 1941–2000 (60 years), and at nine stations for the period 1971–2000 (30 years).

According to the trend computations for the period 1941–2000, variable temperature trends over time and space have been observed. Decreasing trends of the mean annual temperature were observed in northern Egypt and (weakly) increasing trends in southern Egypt. Seasonally, positive trends prevailed in summer compared with negative trends in winter. For the recent period, 1971–2000, positive trends were computed for the mean annual and mean minimum temperatures at all stations except Port Said in northern Egypt, where the annual trend was weakly negative. The mean maximum temperature trends were, however, negative at most stations. Seasonally, a definite trend of warming occurred in summer, in contrast to the observations of a global temperature increase in winter.

A principal component analysis was applied to compute the all‐Egypt temperature trends. For the observation period, 1941–2000, decreasing trends were shown for annual, maximum, winter and autumn temperatures and increasing trends for minimum, winter and spring temperatures. For the recent period, 1971–2000, all trends were positive except maximum temperature. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society