Abstract
The agricultural sector in Poland is of considerable social and economic importance for the nation. Climate variability and change are of primary relevance to this largely climate-dependent sector. Changes in seven temperature-related agroclimatic indices (lengths of the growing season and of the frost-free season, days of occurrence of the last spring frost and of the first autumn frost; and annual sums of growing degree-days for three values of temperature threshold) in Poland in 1951–2010 are examined. As expected, they generally correspond to the overwhelming and ubiquitous warming. Many, but not all, detected trends are statistically significant. However, for some indices, strong natural variability overshadows eventual trends. Projections of temperature-related agroclimatic indices for the future, based on regional climate models, are also discussed.
Highlights
The agricultural sector in Poland is very important, socially and economically
Lengths of the growing season and of the frost-free season were determined for all stations including the high-mountain stations, for which these indices took the lowest values
Highest values of the length of frost-free season were observed at the coastal stations: Hel (192 days) and Świnoujście (200 days)
Summary
The agricultural sector in Poland is very important, socially and economically. The area of agricultural land in the country reaches approx. 187,000 km (as compared to the total area of the country of 312,000 km). The violent history of Poland in the 20th century, embracing armed conflicts, major changes of national boundaries including discontinuity of independent statehood, considerably limited the number and length of existing time series of meteorological data. The authors could access and compile time series of daily temperature (mean, maximum, and minimum values) for 22 meteorological stations in Poland. These stations read Bielsko-Biała, Chojnice, Hel, Jelenia. The rate of plant development and reaching particular development phases approximately depend on the sums of daily exceedance of some threshold temperature values, specific for each plant This can be described via a growing degree-days (GDD). (iii) Weak, statistically insignificant, tendency (significance level between 0.1 and ≤0.25)
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