A Gridded Database for the Spatiotemporal Analysis of Rainfall in Southern Italy (Calabria Region)

Tommaso Caloiero,Gaetano Pellicone,Roberto Coscarelli

doi:10.3390/environsciproc2020002006

Abstract

In this work, a gridded database was obtained from a rainfall dataset of 129 monthly series collected for the period 1951–2016 in the Calabria region (southern Italy). The Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) interpolation method was applied to build 603 rainfall grid series with a spatial resolution of 5 km × 5 km. In order to detect possible trends, for each grid point, the seasonal and annual rainfall series were analyzed with the Mann–Kendall non-parametric test and the Theil–Sen estimator. Results showed a decreasing trend for the annual and winter–autumn rainfall and an increasing trend for the summer one.

Highlights

In recent decades, climate change has received considerable attention for its possible impacts on long- and short-term variability of water resources in several areas of the world
The gridded database was obtained from a rainfall dataset of 129 monthly rainfall series collected in the period 1951–2016 in the Calabria region
The results of the trend analysis applied to the annual and seasonal precipitation, for a 95% significance level, are presented in Figure 2, which shows the percentages of grid points with a positive or negative trend

Summary

Introduction

Climate change has received considerable attention for its possible impacts on long- and short-term variability of water resources in several areas of the world. Climate change could influence extreme dry events, increasing their frequency and magnitude and causing changes in mean renewable water supplies [1]. In this context, the analysis of the spatial and temporal variability of rainfall and runoff has become paramount for water resource management purposes [2]. While the west-central part is characterized by a negative rainfall trend [4], highly variable across the decades, the eastern side presents contrasting results with positive rainfall tendencies in some areas [5,6], and negative trend in others, such as Israel [7,8]. On a seasonal scale, a different trend behavior has been demonstrated in thorough analyses on a regional scale performed in Campania [4,10], Basilicata [11], Sicily [12], Calabria [13], and Sardinia [14,15]

Methods

Results

Conclusion