Abstract
Hydroclimate in Montenegro has large seasonal variation and is prone to water shortages despite high annual precipitation totals. With unfavorable seasonal distribution of precipitation, as well as a low precipitation efficiency for limestone in ground surface, aridity often causes problems in water supply and agriculture. Moreover, recent changes in climate trends exacerbated seasonal droughts and wildfires with serious effects on the economy and environment. Previous studies mainly examined the magnitude and duration of precipitation deficit with respect to the long-term climatology thus enabling identification of different types of drought. For a better characterization of drought in this article, we examine the spatial pattern and trend in aridity in Montenegro from 1961 until 2020 as well as in the first and second half of this period. We use temperature and precipitation observational records from 18 weather stations to calculate three aridity (climate) indices: the De Martonne aridity index (IDM), the Lang’s rain factor (RF), and the Pinna combinative index (IP). We also examine Aridity Index (AI), by using ERA5-Land precipitation dataset, and potential evapotranspiration (PET) at 0.05 km spatial resolution. On an annual scale, all indices show a humid to extreme humid climate in Montenegro. At the seasonal level, winter, autumn and spring seasons exhibit very humid to extremely humid conditions, while summer shows semi-arid conditions mainly in the coastal parts of Montenegro, and neighboring inland. Period from September to April characterizes humid climate; May reveals less humid conditions, while June belongs to Mediterranean climates. July and August exhibit semi-arid conditions. Trends in IDM show growing aridity in April and August in the last six decades. Although growing aridity in April has been confirmed for the last three decades, both trends in IDM and AI show growing humidity in January and June.
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Data availability
The temperature and precipitation observations used here come from the State Institute for Hydrometeorology and Seismology of Montenegro (IHMSM) for the period of 1961 to 2020. They are available from IHMSM on request. All results based on observational records supporting the findings of this manuscript are available from the corresponding author [J.L.] on request. The R code and the gridded data supporting the findings of this manuscript are available at the Github page: https://github.com/pejovic/TAAC_ari_hum_mne
Notes
Calculations on seasonal and monthly scale are performed for IDM and AI due to methodological limitations regarding calculation of RF and IP at the seasonal and monthly scale.
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This work is supported by the Serbian Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation under grant 451–03-47/2023–01/20009, and University of Belgrade under grant 05/68–3882/2019/295.
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Luković, J., Burić, D., Mihajlović, J. et al. Spatial and temporal variations of aridity-humidity indices in Montenegro. Theor Appl Climatol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-024-04893-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-024-04893-y