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Variations and trends of extremes of temperature and precipitation in Italy

 

The climate variability concerns both the mean values and the statistical distribution of climate variable observations. The knowledge of climate extremes and their variations is especially important for the adaptation strategy to climate changes; in fact, the occurrence of extreme events often causes large, negative impacts on human health, economy, environment and in general on the society. We statistically analyze and evaluate extreme temperature and precipitation indices over Italy in the last half century, on the base of available time series of daily observations. Firstly, input data and criteria for selecting proper times series are described; then, climate extreme indices defined by international expert groups are introduced, and methods applied fot calculating the indices on the italian data are illustrated. The last section shows the results, in terms of estimated trends on each meteorological station, and mean time series over Italy of each extreme index.

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ISPRA
State of the Environment
37/2013
978-88-448-0599-9