Repetitiveness and underlying characteristics of climatologic parameters in winter

Abstract

Starting from the standpoint that there are seasonal differences of climate variations on both global and local level, the authors of this paper had focused on analyzing climatologic parameters in winter months. The trends of several important parameters were detected, with temperature and precipitation having increasing, but number of ice days and snow cover having decreasing trends. Spectral analysis showed repetitive nature of climatologic parameters, some of them having the same or similar periods of about 6 to 7 years, 10 to 12 or 17.5 years, and 22 to 24 years. The precipitation has periodicity of 8 and 14 years. Further analysis of the underlying structure of the data by principal component analysis detected three easily explained dimensions: Temperature-Snow, Precipitation-Cyclone and Spring-in-Winter dimension. The spectral analysis of three virtual variables obtained by principal component analysis confirmed good agreement of original variables with the virtual dimensions. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Wien.