Variability of Air Temperature During Winter Between 1961-2022 in Southwest Romania (Oltenia)

Abstract

The periods of heating and cooling of the weather on Earth followed each other with great irregularity and caused significant variations in air temperature but allowed the existence of life and especially of the human species. In the paper I have analysed the variation of the air temperature in Oltenia during the winters for the interval 1961-2022. A number of our other works have analysed climate variability in this part of Romania. After the warm interval 1945-1955 there followed a gradual cooling of the weather, and in the interval 1986-2022 (for 36 years), there was not a single very cold winter (FR) but only two cold winters (R) and two cool (RC). The interval 2000-2022 (23 years) was the warmest of the entire period of meteorological observations in Oltenia. Many annual, monthly and daily temperature climate records have been broken. At the same time, in the analysed interval, in the polar areas the rate of melting of the ice increased a lot and exceptional thermal maxima were recorded in the cold season. The warm periods during the winters were increasingly longer, more frequent and more intense. The work is useful to all those interested in climate variability in Oltenia.

Keywords

• warm winters
• early springs
• drought
• winter heat waves
• climate warming