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| Titel |
Regional Analysis of Precipitation at the Valencia and the Alacant Anchor Stations Reference Areas by Means of the Standard Precipitation Index |
| VerfasserIn |
C. Narbon Ramponi, S. Vidal Vicedo, A. Perez Hoyos, R. Nalda Molina, V. Gomez Rubio, F. Belda Esplugues, E. Lopez-Baeza |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2009
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 11 (2009) |
| Datensatznummer |
250030480
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The behaviour and dimensionality of precipitation in the Mediterranean Region determine, in
a very significant way, different aspects such as agricultural development, availability of
water resources, drought monitoring, etc. Using only this parameter and defining
what is known as the Standarized Precipitation Index (SPI), it has been shown that
this index is very useful for the study of the climatology of dry and/or wet events
and, therefore, it is of high value for the identification and monitoring of climatic
droughts.
This study shows an analysis of SPI on two semi-arid areas of the Autonomous Region of
Valencia (Spain) which are exposed to undergoing periods of drought. They are the Valencia
Anchor Station (VAS) area which is placed over the natural region of the Utiel-Requena
Plateau (west of the province of Valencia), and the Alacant Anchor Station (AAS) area which
is placed over the natural region of the Vinalopó Mitjà (west of the province of
Alicante). Both stations, separated a distance of about 150 km, are actually twin
stations, their representative areas have similar land use and soil types, which allows to
consider similar antrophogenic impacts, but they are located in two different climatic
zones: the average annual precipitation is about 450 mm in the Valencia Anchor
Station area and about 250 mm in the Alacant Anchor Station one. The latter is
considered to be the agricultural area objectively most degraded of the Valencia
Autonomous Region, of problematic sustainability and easily vulnerable from the
viewpoint of water resources. The parallelism between both Anchor Stations and
the fact that one of them is under water-stressing conditions, make it appropriate
to define a Water Cycle Observatory to study the variations of the climatic and
hydrological conditions by studying and comparing meteorological parameters
and surface fluxes of radiation, energy and water between both Anchor Station
areas.
Monthly series of precipitation data have been generated for 77 rain gauges collected
from 1971 to 2006 by the Spanish Agency for Meteorology (AEMet). The temporal gaps
were completed using multiple linear regressions and the homogeneity of each time series
was checked through Run and Von Neumann tests. Then, multivariate statistical methods such
as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Cluster Analysis have been used on SPI values
at short time scales. The results of these tests represent a valuable characterization of both
Anchor Station areas which are used for the validation of remote sensing data and
products, concluding that there exist homogeneous regions with similar pattern
behaviours associated to typical meteorological phenomena in the Mediterranean climate. |
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