Premium
Trends in heavy precipitation in the Czech Republic over 1961–2005
Author(s) -
Kyselý Jan
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/joc.1784
Subject(s) - precipitation , czech , climatology , northern hemisphere , environmental science , period (music) , spring (device) , physical geography , geography , climate change , trend analysis , meteorology , geology , oceanography , mechanical engineering , philosophy , linguistics , physics , acoustics , engineering , machine learning , computer science
Trends in multiple characteristics of heavy precipitation over the area of the Czech Republic are evaluated using a new dataset from 175 rain‐gauge stations covering the period 1961–2005. The temporal changes are generally more pronounced in the western than eastern part of the country. Spatially coherent increasing trends are identified for all indices of heavy precipitation in winter in the western region, the relative trend magnitudes being mostly between 20 and 30% over the 45 years. Increasing but insignificant and spatially less coherent trends in heavy precipitation prevail also in summer. Opposite trends occur in spring (when they are related to declines in seasonal precipitation totals), and the changes are spatially least coherent and insignificant in autumn (in spite of the increase in mean precipitation). The differences between winter and summer on the one hand and the transition seasons on the other highlight the need for involving spring and autumn into studies of temporal changes of climatic variables, to avoid simplified views. It is also shown that trends in heavy precipitation at Prague‐Klementinum, the most frequently analysed long‐term station in the Czech Republic [and the only one available in continental‐scale analyses within the European Climate Assessment (ECA) project and related activities], are particularly unrepresentative for a wider area. The analysis partly supports an emerging global picture of prevailing positive trends in precipitation extremes over the mid‐latitudinal land areas of the Northern Hemisphere in winter. However, the cut‐off between the western and eastern parts of the Czech Republic in many precipitation characteristics, including the trends in wintertime indices of precipitation extremes, may indicate that the pattern of changes is more complex and less coherent in eastern than in western Europe. Copyright © 2008 Royal Meteorological Society