FREQUENCY OF WARM WINTERS WITHIN OLTENIA IN 1999-2008 DECADE

 Octavia Bogdan, Ion Marinică, Andreea Floriana Marinică

  

Abstract. - In the 20th century, in Romania, warm winters registered a mean frequency of about 1/10-15 years. Once the intensification of climate warming, aspect emphasized by numerous papers published especially after the `90, the frequency of warm winters also increased, as well as that of dry and excessively hot summers. The present paper deals with the analysis of the high frequency of warm winters registered in the decade 1999-2000 – 2008-2009, in Oltenia; 50% of them were included in this category, 10% being very warm and 10% exceptionally warm. In the winter of 2000-2001, it was registered an exceptionally high temperature, which became the absolute maximum temperature value for January. Snow cover was insignificant or absent for long periods. The climatic risk of warm winters occurred on the background of climate warming, which led to the intensification of the circulation of Mediterranean tropical air. Consequently, the vegetative processes start from winter leading to the early development of fruit trees and autumn agricultural crops, which are then greatly damaged by late spring hoarfrost. During the analysed interval, the winters 2000-2001 and 2006-2007 were exceptionally warm, in the last case, the deviations of the monthly and daily means compared to the multiannual means, considered normal, being the greatest in the history of meteorological observations from our country. Warm winters are often followed by dry springs. We used data from the archives of the Oltenia RMC, maps from international meteorological centers and satellite images, on the base of which we classified winters.

 

Key words: warm winters, positive temperature deviations, climatic risks, exceptional winter thermal maximums, Mediterranean influences

 

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