Climate issues on aridity trends of Southern Oltenia in the last five decades

Remus PRĂVĂLIE

ABSTRACT: Climate aridity in Romania, in the context of global climate change, represent an actual issue at national level. The present study attempts to quantify the trend of climate aridisation of southern Oltenia in the last five decades (from 1961 to 2009) based on analysis of climate data on temperature, precipitations and potential evapotranspiration. These meteorological parameters were used to create specific climate indexes to assess the temporal trend of aridity (De Martonne Aridity Index, UNEP Aridity Index and Water Deficit Index), which are among the most representative of the analyzed phenomenon. The obtained results showed that during the five decades analyzed, the aridity trend is pronounced, occurring especially after 1980 year. This threshold of growing aridity phenomenon are mainly due to the changes of climatic parameters such as: the lowering of the average annual rainfall, the rising of mean annual temperatures and the increasing of potential evapotranspiration as a result of the annual thermal regime change after 1980 year.

Keywords: Aridization, aridity indexes, southern Oltenia, climate changes. .

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