Ten years water and energy surface balance from the CNR-ISAC micrometeorological station in Salento peninsula (southern Italy)

Abstract

Data of surface-atmosphere energy and water transfer from a ten years (2003–2013) period of activity of the ISAC-Lecce micrometeorological station (http://www.basesperimentale.le.isac.cnr.it) have been analyzed: to the authors' knowledge this is the first decadal data set of surface-atmosphere transfer in Salento peninsula. The surface energy budget shows a tendency to a positive bias possibly due to several reasons that require more investigations. Some suitable indices related to the surface water balance, such as the precipitation intensity, the aridity index and the ground water infiltration fraction have been calculated. Possible trends of these annual averages in the decadal period are considered, also taking into account the statistical uncertainty associated to measurement errors and missing data. The results indicate a significant increasing in the precipitation intensity together with an experimental evidence of increasing of the ground water infiltration in the measurement area, that is in agreement with recent estimations for the whole Salento peninsula. On the other hand, recent studies show that seawater intrusion and salinization of the deep underground aquifer keep increasing in the same period.