Abstract
One of the most important uncertainties in a changing climate conditions are changes in climate extremes. While precipitation extremes are particularly important at low latitudes, thermal extremes are of major interest at mid-latitudes. This study analyses the cold (CS) and warm (WS) spells winter climatology in the eastern part of the Baltic Sea region from 1951 till 2020. Data from the E-OBS database were used in the research. A CS/WS in this study is an event when extreme low/high (below 10th/above 90th percentile) air temperature persists for at least 5 days. The period 1971–2000 was used as the climate norm. The results show that both absolute winter air temperature minimum and maximum increased over the investigation period. The absolute maximum of winter air temperature strongly increased after 1988, when a statistically significant regime shift was determined. The results show that the number of WSs has increased and changes are statistically significant in most cases. Meanwhile, the recurrence and duration of CSs have changed insignificantly, although the number of years with more than one CSs is decreasing. The total number of CS/WS cases per season slightly increased. Total number of WSs days increased a lot at the last decade of the investigation period, while the number of CSs days changed insignificantly in recent several decades.
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Data availability
E-OBS temperature data are available online via the Copernicus Climate Data Store archive (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/insitu-gridded-observations-europe?tab=overview (accessed on 10 September 2021)), and Arctic oscillation index data were downloaded from the NOAA Climate Prediction Centre website (accessed on 10 September 2021): https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.shtml.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the E-OBS dataset from the EU-FP6 project UERRA (http://www.uerra.eu) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service, and the data providers in the ECA&D project (https://www.ecad.eu)
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This research was funded by European Social Fund under grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT) [grant number 09.3.3-LMT-K-712–02-0141].
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Gečaitė, I., Rimkus, E. Wintertime cold and warm spells in the eastern part of the Baltic Sea region. Nat Hazards 115, 2435–2456 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-022-05648-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-022-05648-6