Relationship between atmospheric circulation weather types and seasonal precipitation in Serbia

Abstract

An automated version of the Lamb weather type classification scheme was used to classify daily circulation types over Serbia. The synoptic characteristics of 26 weather types and their relative frequencies are discussed for spring and autumn, complementing research previously published by Putniković et al. (Meteorol Atmos Phys 128:649–662, 2016) for winter and summer. Trends of the circulation types are presented, as well as precipitation trends during the period 1961–2010. Precipitation was modeled by the stepwise regression at six stations, defining weather types as independent variables. The anticyclonic (A) type is the most frequent class occurring in autumn (23.87%), displaying a positive trend for spring and significant negative trend for autumn. The frequencies of anticyclonic and cyclonic (C) types are almost the same for spring: 14.33 and 14.02%, respectively. The C type shows a significant negative trend only in spring. The increasing trend of the frequency of the C types and decreasing trend of the A types are in agreement with the increasing trend of precipitation in Serbia during autumn. Results suggest that the C type affects precipitation occurrence over most of the country, while the remaining 25 types provide more negligible or regional contributions to precipitation.