Three decades of heat waves and extreme precipitation in Tirana
Published on:
October 02, 2023
Abstract
Abstract: One of the most popular derivatives of the global warming is the increase of the frequency of extreme weather phenomena during the last decades. In the Albanian territory during the last three decades were observed extreme weather phenomena as heat waves during summer and also many events of extreme daily precipitation in different periods of the year. Both the extreme weather phenomena have caused a significant impact in the economy and life of the Albanian society. To better manage the negative impact any time these extreme phenomena happen and to minimize the losses, a better knowledge of each phenomenon is needed. In different Albanian regions, during the last three decades, there are signals of an increasing in the number of the extreme weather events. This study is focused on analysing the extreme weather events in Tirana city, the capital of Albania where live nearly the half of Albanian population. For this reason, to have an objective picture about the behaviour of these phenomena for Tirana, a long-term analysis should be performed for each of the phenomena, observed in the last three decades. Different authors used different determining methods to define a phenomenon as an extreme weather event and a good method could be the estimation of some of the most important indicators of each phenomena. This study covers a 30 years period and some indices were estimated and analysed regarding the heat wave phenomenon as the heat wave frequency (HWF), heat wave duration (HWD), heat wave season (HWS), heat wave intensity (HWI) and heat wave peak (HWP). In a second step, some of the main indices of the extreme daily precipitation were estimated and analysed as the annual total precipitation (PRCPTOT), simple daily intensity index (SDII), consecutive wet days (CWD), annual maximum of one day precipitation (RX1day), number of days of total precipitation over than 100 mm (R100mm) and number of days of total precipitation over than 150 mm (R150mm). Daily data of air temperatures and precipitation were used to calculate the above indices and their analysis aims to reveal any useful information that may be used as a tool to improve both the strategies of risk reduction of the heat waves and flooding firstly in Tirana city and after, in other similar urban areas. Keywords: Extreme rainfall, flood, temperatures, heat wave, global warming
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.427.0195
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