Long-term behaviour of precipitation at three stations in Serbia
- Authors: Jasna Plavšić, Borislava Blagojević, Andrijana Todorović, Jovan Despotović
- Citation: Acta hydrotechnica, vol. 29, no. 50, pp. 23-36, 2016.
- Abstract: This paper investigates precipitation records at three precipitation stations in Serbia that received the greatest amount of rainfall during the catastrophic floods that struck Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia in May 2014. The aim is to identify precipitation anomalies by analysing trends in different precipitation indices, including precipitation totals, maxima of durations from one to seven days and the rate of occurrence of precipitation exceeding certain thresholds, while looking at the multi-decadal oscillations in the data that may explain the variability. Three stations in Serbia are considered: Loznica, Valjevo and Belgrade, with record of 62, 65 and 91 years, respectively. The results show somewhat different long-term behaviour at these stations. Significant increasing trends in some indices are detected at Loznica, while most of these trends are not present at the other two stations. Oscillatory behaviour at three stations is also somewhat different and it is difficult to conclude whether the detected trends are consistent with background oscillations seen in the longest Belgrade series. Analysis of long-term behaviour of monthly totals shows a multitude of patterns, indicating that the long-term behaviour of the annual precipitation series has a very complex structure. No significant increasing trend is detected in May series at any station.
- Keywords: extreme precipitation, trend, long-term persistence, low frequency oscillations, floods, May 2014 floods in Serbia
- Full text: a29jp.pdf
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