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Snow climate baseline conditions and trends in Croatia relevant to winter tourism

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Abstract

The presence of snow along a portion of the Croatian highlands has enabled the development of winter tourism that is primarily oriented toward snow-related activities. Snow is more abundant and stays on the ground longer in the mountainous district of Gorski kotar (south eastern edge of the Alps) and on Mount Velebit (Dinaric Alps), which have elevations of up to 1,600 m and are close to the Adriatic coast than over the inland hilly region of north western Croatia where the summits are not more than approximately 1,000 m high. Basic information about the snow conditions at these locations was gathered for this study, including the annual cycle and probabilities for various snow parameters at different altitudes. As requested by the Croatian Ski Association, the relation between the air temperature and the relative humidity was investigated to determine the feasibility of artificial snowmaking. The snow parameters are highly correlated to air temperature, surface air pressure and precipitation, with certain differences occurring as a result of the altitude. Since the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, winter warming and a significant increase in the mean air pressure (more anticyclonic situations) have been detected at all sites. Winter precipitation totals decreased at medium altitudes and increased at the summit of Mount Velebit, but these trends were not significant. The frequency of precipitation days and of snowfall decreased whereas an increasing fraction of the precipitation days at high altitudes involved solid precipitation. In contrast, a decreasing fraction of the precipitation days at medium altitudes involved solid precipitation, probably because of the different warming intensities at different altitudes. The mean daily snow depth and the duration of snow cover both slightly decreased at medium altitudes whereas the snow cover duration slightly increased at the mountainous summit of Mount Velebit.

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Acknowledgment

This research study was supported by the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports (grant 004-1193086-3035). I appreciate the suggestions of the reviewers, which helped me improve the article and present the results more clearly.

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  1. Department for Climatological Research and Applied Climatology, Meteorological and Hydrological Service, Grič 3, HR-10000, Zagreb, Croatia

    M. Gajić-Čapka

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Correspondence to M. Gajić-Čapka.

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Gajić-Čapka, M. Snow climate baseline conditions and trends in Croatia relevant to winter tourism. Theor Appl Climatol 105, 181–191 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-010-0385-5

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