THE EVOLUTION TREND OF THE THERMO-PLUVIOMETRICAL COMPLEX IN COTNARI (1961-2020)

The main elements that define the climate of a place are air temperature and atmospheric precipitation. Through this study, we aim to highlight the significance and extent of the trends of the two climatic elements for the interval 1961-2020 at the Cotnari meteorological station compared to those at the territorially neighboring stations Botoşani, Iaşi and Roman. For this purpose, we identified the basic thermo-pluviometric peculiarities at the Cotnari meteorological station for the period 1961-2020 and analyzed the evolution of the thermo-pluviometric parameters on interdecadal and interannual periods. We then applied the Mann-Kendall test combined with Sen's slope to estimate the trend over the reference period. Following these analyses, in Cotnari, taking as a reference the average annual temperature of 9.6°C and the average annual amount of precipitation of 543.8 mm, we found that after the year 2000, the trend of these two elements was positive, which shows an increase in air temperature and quantitative atmospheric precipitation. In total, the annual thermal averages increased statistically significantly by 0.33°C/decade. Annual precipitation increased during 1961–2020 by 2.2 mm/decade and showed modest statistical significance.