Annual and seasonal precipitation over Italy from 1961 to 2006.

The article presents an analysis of annual and seasonal precipitation series of period 1961-2006 developed from 59 synoptic meteorological stations across Italy. It applied rotated principal component analysis (PCA) to monthly data and generated loading maps. The study found that annual cumulated precipitation series did not show significant levels of change and that only in winter was a precipitation trend seen in northern and Central Italy.