Using Long-Term Historical Meteorological Data for Climate Change Analysis in the Carpathian Region

Abstract

In this study, we consider the historical climatological time series available in the meteorological yearbooks of the Royal Hungarian Central Institute of Meteorology and Earth Magnetism, first published in 1871. Data quality improvement of historical data includes the homogenization process with outlier checks and data gap filling by applying the MASH software. We investigated 13 stations from the Carpathian Region having the most complete monthly temperature and precipitation time series for the period of 1871–1918 and 8 stations with fog observations (1886–1916). First, statistical tests were conducted to compare the main statistics of the historical datasets (1871–1918) with current data (1971–2020). The sources of the current data are the National Meteorological Administration of Romania and the European Climate Assessment & Dataset. The results show significant changes between the two periods. In the whole region, the mean temperature in the last five decades (1971–2020) was 0.77 °C higher than in 1871–1918. Changes in the frequency of foggy situations were also detected. On an annual scale, in the last 31-year period (1990–2020), the number of foggy days increased by 16.2 compared with 1886–1916. Even if some local trends can be detected in the historical periods (e.g., Cluj-Napoca), significant changes are much more characteristic in the recent period.