Changes in daily extreme temperatures in the extra‐Carpathians regions of Romania

Abstract

AbstractChanges in daily extreme temperatures have been identified in many studies conducted at local, regional or global scales. For Romanian territory, only little research on this issue was done. In this article, the extra‐Carpathians regions of Romania located southward and eastward from the Carpathians Chain were considered. This study is focused on analyzing daily extreme temperature trends at a regional scale (eastern, southern and southeastern regions of Romania) across 50 years (1961–2010). Data sets of daily minimum and maximum temperature recorded in 14 weather stations were analyzed. The main goal was to find changes in extreme daily temperatures using a set of 20 indices adopted from the core indices developed by ETCCDMI with appropriate modifications to suit to the analyzed territory. The main results suggest that regional temperature trends at the scale of extra‐Carpathians areas of Romania are similar to those calculated for global and European continental scales; the climate has become warmer during the last decades. It has been identified that both extreme daily maximum and minimum temperatures have increased in the analyzed areas. For all the indices related to hot temperature most trends are significantly positive. The strongest increase was detected for hot related extremes such as summer days and tropical nights as well as for maximum values of maximum and minimum daily temperatures. For indices related to cold there are different sign slopes, but negative slopes prevail, especially for number of days under a defined threshold. This is also an evidence of the important warming in the area. Generally, it was found that the daily maximum temperature is getting more extreme, whereas the minimum is getting less extreme. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society