Ten years water and energy surface balance from the CNR-ISAC micrometeorological station in Salento peninsula (southern Italy)

P Martano,F Grasso,C Elefante

doi:10.5194/asr-12-121-2015

Abstract

Abstract. Data of surface-atmosphere energy and water transfer from a ten years (2003–2013) period of activity of the ISAC-Lecce micrometeorological station (http://www.basesperimentale.le.isac.cnr.it) have been analyzed: to the authors' knowledge this is the first decadal data set of surface-atmosphere transfer in Salento peninsula. The surface energy budget shows a tendency to a positive bias possibly due to several reasons that require more investigations. Some suitable indices related to the surface water balance, such as the precipitation intensity, the aridity index and the ground water infiltration fraction have been calculated. Possible trends of these annual averages in the decadal period are considered, also taking into account the statistical uncertainty associated to measurement errors and missing data. The results indicate a significant increasing in the precipitation intensity together with an experimental evidence of increasing of the ground water infiltration in the measurement area, that is in agreement with recent estimations for the whole Salento peninsula. On the other hand, recent studies show that seawater intrusion and salinization of the deep underground aquifer keep increasing in the same period.

Highlights

Semi-arid coastal regions are common in Mediterranean areas
Some suitable indices related to the surface water balance, such as the precipitation intensity, the aridity index and the ground water infiltration fraction have been calculated
The results indicate a significant increasing in the precipitation intensity together with an experimental evidence of increasing of the ground water infiltration in the measurement area, that is in agreement with recent estimations for the whole Salento peninsula

Summary

Introduction

Semi-arid coastal regions are common in Mediterranean areas. The correct assessment of the surface water and energy balance can be difficult for such regions, due the extreme changes in the surface moisture conditions that require direct measurements. Reliable estimates of evapotranspiration generally based on the potential evaporation concept (Allen et al, 1998) are not easy to obtain over surfaces that are often in very dry conditions In this context evapotranspiration constitutes one of the less known components of the surface water budget especially for climatic studies, and long term time series of measurements are often not easy to be found. The aim of this work is to present a data set of long term experimental measurements of the surface energy and water balance as measured by the CNR-ISAC micrometeorological station in Salento peninsula (the only available long term data set in Salento, to the authors’ knowledge), and to give an experimental support to the hydrological modelling for the local water resources management

Data collection

Time series post processing

Results and discussion