Long‐term precipitation trend analysis in Europe and in the Mediterranean basin

• Published in: Water and environment journal : WEJ Vol. 32; no. 3; pp. 433 - 445
• Main Authors: Caloiero, Tommaso, Caloiero, Paola, Frustaci, Francesco
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.08.2018
• Subjects: Annual precipitation; Atmospheric precipitations; Climate; Climatology; Data; data collection; Datasets; Europe; Hydrologic data; Hydrology; latitude; longitude; Mediterranean basin; Mediterranean region; Northern Africa; Northern European region; Northern Hemisphere; Precipitation; Rain; Rainfall; Spatial discrimination; trend; Trend analysis; Trends; water management; Water resources; Water resources management; Europe; Mediterranean Area; Northern Africa; Northern European region; Mediterranean region
• DOI: 10.1111/wej.12346
• ISSN: 1747-6585

The spatiotemporal analysis of a region's precipitation climate regime could be particularly interesting for many fields of applied sciences, such as climatology, hydrology and water resources management. In this study, the precipitation trends at seasonal and annual scale, over a large area of the northern Hemisphere have been analysed based on a globally gridded precipitation data sets of monthly observations. In particular, among the several data sets available in literature, with spatial resolutions of 0.5° longitude/latitude, in this work the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre Full Data Reanalysis Version 6 data set has been used. The broad extension of the area under investigation allowed a better understanding of trend precipitation patterns over space. In fact, yearly results evidenced a marked negative rainfall tendency in the eastern Mediterranean (more than −20 mm/10 years) and in North Africa (until −16 mm/10 years), while a relatively large positive trend (more than 20 mm/10 years) in central and northern Europe has been observed.