Trend Analysis of Annual and Seasonal Air Temperature Time Series in Southern Italy

Meteorological variables trend analysis, on different spatial and temporal scales, has been of great concern during the past century because of the attention paid from the scientific community to global climate change. According to some recent studies, the southern areas of Italy are suffering strengthening drought conditions. The aim of this study is to analyse temperature time series, detecting potential trends and assessing their significance and magnitude. For this purpose about 62 gauged stations, mainly located within the Campania region, Southern Italy, have been analysed for the period 1924-1999. Statistical analysis of the database highlight that: (i) trend appears predominantly positive, both at the annual and seasonal scale (ii) at the annual scale positive trends are significant for 34 % of total stations, (iii) significant positive and negative trend average magnitude appear rather severe, ranging from -1.5 degrees C/decade to +0.85 degrees C/decade respectively.