Temperature Variability in Apulia Region (Italy) and its Impact on the Reference Evapotranspiration: Seasonal Based Analysis of the Period 1950 to 2003

The minimum, maximum, mean temperatures and reference evapotranspiration were considered in this paper for the purpose of trend analysis. The study, which was based on 38 monitoring stations, was carried out at a sub-national scale throughout Apulia region (Italy). The methodology of the nonparametric Mann-Kendall test and the progressive trend analysis were used for the trend detection. The second half of the 20th century (1950-2003) was investigated on seasonal and annual scales. The results generally showed a warming process, which has taken place especially from the mid-1970s, and an acceleration of the atmospheric evaporative demand thereafter. The latter had a significant positive trend, while the period before the break point of the 70s had a cooling effect. Finally, the warming was more pronounced in the case of minimum temperature.