Climate 2017, 5(1), 16; https://doi.org/10.3390/cli5010016
Long-Term Climate Trends and Extreme Events in Northern Fennoscandia (1914–2013)
1
Department of Geographical and Historical Studies, University of Eastern Finland, P. O. Box 111, FI-80101 Joensuu, Finland
2
Department of Geography and Geology, University of Turku, FI-20014 Turku, Finland
3
Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014 Jyväskylä, Finland
4
Finnish Meteorological Institute, P. O. Box 503, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Christina Anagnostopoulou
Received: 16 December 2016 / Accepted: 22 February 2017 / Published: 26 February 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Extremes, the Past and the Future)
Abstract
We studied climate trends and the occurrence of rare and extreme temperature and precipitation events in northern Fennoscandia in 1914–2013. Weather data were derived from nine observation stations located in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. The results showed that spring and autumn temperatures and to a lesser extent summer temperatures increased significantly in the study region, the observed changes being the greatest for daily minimum temperatures. The number of frost days declined both in spring and autumn. Rarely cold winter, spring, summer and autumn seasons had a low occurrence and rarely warm spring and autumn seasons a high occurrence during the last 20-year interval (1994–2013), compared to the other 20-year intervals. That period was also characterized by a low number of days with extremely low temperature in all seasons (4–9% of all extremely cold days) and a high number of April and October days with extremely high temperature (36–42% of all extremely warm days). A tendency of exceptionally high daily precipitation sums to grow even higher towards the end of the study period was also observed. To summarize, the results indicate a shortening of the cold season in northern Fennoscandia. Furthermore, the results suggest significant declines in extremely cold climate events in all seasons and increases in extremely warm climate events particularly in spring and autumn seasons. View Full-Text
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Kivinen, S.; Rasmus, S.; Jylhä, K.; Laapas, M. Long-Term Climate Trends and Extreme Events in Northern Fennoscandia (1914–2013). Climate 2017, 5, 16.
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