engleski

Northern Adriatic (Croatia): Climate change or climate variation

Global warming and climate change is getting ever more concern. The last two decades were declared to be the warmest since the beginning of meteorological measurements. The same trend is visible in the Rijeka meteorological data, as a part of a longer series, i.e. 1977-2010, since the relocation of meteorological station (120 m a.s.l). The meteorological parameters analysed in this work are: yearly mean temperature, minimum and maximum temperature, relative humidity, yearly precipitation depth as well as number of days with rain. Data analyses showed increase in yearly average temperature by 0.3 – 0.6 o C, and increase of daily maximum by approx. 10oC over the period studied. In spite of declining trend in precipitation depths until 2007, the number of rainy days increased for approx. 30 days at the same time, suggesting switching to warmer and more humid climate. The last three years data show the opposing trend thus smoothing these trends. Confronting the few historical data from the second half of XIX century with this time series, it turns out that nowadays measurements (annual, maximum temperature, rainfall and number of rainy days) fall into the same range thus indicating climate variation rather than climate change.

Northern Adriatic; climate change; rainy days; temperature

ESF Research Networking Programmes 06-RNP-045 CLIMMANI