Search

In this paper results of the complex analysis of surface air temperature tendencies investigations at the Ukrainian Antarctic Akademik Vernadsky station are represented. Antarctica is a region that has a high rate of surface air temperature increase. The Antarctic Peninsula has experienced particularly fast warming, which has the highest temperature rise in the Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, in Antarctica, the study of surface air temperature change is important. The Ukrainian Antarctic Akademik Vernadsky station is located on Galindez Island near the Antarctic Peninsula. Investigation of the surface air temperature is especially relevant to the Akademik Vernadsky station, because it has difficult conditions for its formation. The research goal is the estimation of tendencies, homogeneity and stationarity of the annual and mean monthly values of surface air temperature at the Ukrainian Antarctic Akademik Vernadsky station based on a combined approach with the use of several statistical and graphical methods. The use of various statistical methods that differ in characteristics (sensitivity to the law of distribution, autocorrelation, etc.) allows obtaining more reliable estimates. Graphic methods give an opportunity to analyze the tendencies over time and its change periods, the cyclical fluctuations and their characteristics (phases of increase and decrease, their duration, synchronicity, in-phase). Therefore, 4 statistical tests (standard normal Alexandersson test, Buishand test, Pettitt test, von Neumann relation) and 2 graphical methods (mass curve and residual mass curve) were used in the study. At the Ukrainian Antarctic Akademik Vernadsky station, the observation series of the mean annual air temperature are quasi-homogeneous and quasi-stationary, as it has only a cooling phase and a warming phase of long-term cyclical fluctuations, which are also unfinished. The transition from the cooling phase to the warming phase took place in 1982. Tendencies in mean monthly air temperatures are similar to tendencies in mean annual temperatures. The differences are only for some months, namely, for the period from September to December.

The current work addresses one of the key building blocks towards an improved understanding of flood processes and associated changes in flood characteristics and regimes in Europe: the development of a comprehensive, extensive European flood database. The presented work results from ongoing cross-border research collaborations initiated with data collection and joint interpretation in mind. A detailed account of the current state, characteristics and spatial and temporal coverage of the European Flood Database, is presented. At this stage, the hydrological data collection is still growing and consists at this time of annual maximum and daily mean discharge series, from over 7000 hydrometric stations of various data series lengths. Moreover, the database currently comprises data from over 50 different data sources. The time series have been obtained from different national and regional data sources in a collaborative effort of a joint European flood research agreement based on the exchange of data, models and expertise, and from existing international data collections and open source websites. These ongoing efforts are contributing to advancing the understanding of regional flood processes beyond individual country boundaries and to a more coherent flood research in Europe.