Large scale seasonal rainfall analysis in the Mediterranean area

This study investigates the rainfall variability in the Mediterranenan area using a homogenised gridded monthly precipitation dataset for the period 1951 to 2000 developed by the GPCC in the research project VASClimO. This climatological data set provides gridded monthly data for 50 years, covering the global land areas with a spatial resolution of 0.5° x 0.5° latitude and longitude. First, a statistical analysis was performed through the Mann-Kendall non-parametric test in order to determine rainfall trend on both yearly and seasonal scale. Then, the relationship between the rainfall and some teleconnection pattern indexes has been investigated. The results of trend analysis show significant negative values only for annual rainfall. The correlation between winter rainfall and climatic indexes is good for NAOI and MOI, exspecially for various areas of Spain, Northern Italy and Balkan region.