Long‐term analysis of heat waves in Ukraine

Abstract

In the past few decades, severe heat waves were representative of the weather conditions in various parts of the world. They had distinctly negative impacts on humans, plants, animals and different economic sectors. Particularly in cities, where most humans are living, their well‐being, efficiency and health were affected, which even caused a relatively high mortality rate. This is why a large interest still exists to analyse heat waves in the past by use of statistical methods. As an investigation on heat waves is not available for the territory of Ukraine up to now, a retrospective analysis was conducted. Its main aims were (1) to determine the frequency of heat wave episodes for this country and (2) to analyse their spatiotemporal distribution, duration and intensity. On the basis of 13 selected stations of the meteorological network of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Centre, daily values of maximum air temperature (Ta,max) in the summer months June to August were used to determine heat wave episodes according to the definition recommended by the IPCC. For all stations, complete and reliable Ta,max time series were available for the period 1951–2011. With respect to some stations, the Ta,max time series already started some years earlier, e.g. in 1936 for five stations and even in 1911 for four stations. However, the Ta,max time series of almost all stations had gaps in the summer months before 1951, particularly in the 1940s of the 20th century. As they could not be filled in a satisfying way, this limitation was considered in the data analysis. The results indicate that most of the heat wave episodes occurred at stations located in Eastern Ukraine. In contrast to other decades, the number of heat wave episodes was highest for almost all stations in the decade 2001–2010. The fewest heat wave episodes were determined for the two decades 1961 to 1980. The longest heat wave duration varied between 7 d in Henichesk (southern seashore) and 24 d in Lugansk (Eastern Ukraine). For many stations, the longest heat wave duration occurred in the first two decades of August 2010, i.e. in the period of the extremely severe heat wave in Western Russia. The intensity of heat waves was analysed by use of the cumulative Ta,max excess. The results show that heat waves of the longest duration mostly represented the strongest heat waves. The 24‐d heat wave 2010 in Lugansk was the strongest in the investigation period quantified by a cumulative Ta,max excess of 128 °C.

Warm spells in Northern Europe in relation to atmospheric circulation

“…Similar results were also obtained for Central Europe (Tomczyk and Bednorz 2015). The increase in frequency of extreme weather phenomena, including heat waves, was found in the Czech Republic (Kyselý 2010), Poland (Kossowska-Cezak 2010; Tomczyk 2014b), Serbia (Unkašević and Tošić 2009), Ukraine (Shevchenko et al 2014) and Spitsbergen (Tomczyk and Bednorz 2014b). As Twardosz and Kossowska-Cezak (2013) showed, currently, in Central and Eastern Europe, there is an increase in a number of extremely hot months, which were most frequently recorded in the first decade of the twenty-first century.…”

Temporal Variability of Summer Temperature Extremes in Poland

“…Extreme summer conditions have been also confirmed by changes in the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme temperature events. Studies of the variability of maximum air temperature conducted for different areas of Europe from the north: e.g., Baltic region [13], through the central-eastern countries, e.g., [7,8,[14][15][16][17], western regions, e.g., [6,18] towards the Mediterranean [19,20], are in agreement that exceptionally hot summers have been common since the 1990s. Research describing heat-wave episodes in particular years in Europe have focused mostly on 2003 for the western countries, e.g., [21,22] and 2010 for the eastern countries [23,24].…”

Assessing Homogeneity and Climate Variability of Temperature and Precipitation Series in the Capitals of North-Eastern Brazil

“…Thresholds based on percentile values allow for a comparative evaluation of seasonal characteristics over diverse geographical locations (Shevchenko et al, 2014;Lhotka and Kyselý, 2015), while fixed thresholds help understanding regional climate characteristics (Kyselý, 2002(Kyselý, , 2010.…”