Mediterranean climate: visibility and trends Edited by Hans-Jürgen Bolle, Springer-Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 2002. No. of pages: 320, hardback. ISBN 3-540-43838-6.
✍ Scribed by Pavlos Kassomenos
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2006
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 26 KB
- Volume
- 26
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0899-8418
- DOI
- 10.1002/joc.1315
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✦ Synopsis
This book consists of seven chapters. It begins with a brief introduction. H-J Bolle presents in Chapter 2 the climate in general, its variability and impacts in the Mediterranean area. It is a significant overview of the past and present climates in the area, the complexity of the Mediterranean system due to the interaction of various scales of motion as well as the role of the Mediterranean Sea in the global carbon budget and atmospheric pollution. The effects of vegetation, water cycles, precipitation, aerosols and forest fires on the climate of the area are also discussed. Finally, a thorough literature review follows.
Chapter 3 deals with the challenges in climate data analysis. It is divided in two subsections: the indicators and information requirements for combating desertification and the effects on agriculture from the possible climate changes in the Mediterranean region. The first subsection reviews the indicators for assessing desertification and proposes the most contemporary ones. The second subsection deals with the impacts that could be important in understanding the vulnerability of the Mediterranean agriculture and the possible influences on agriculture from the climate change, and presents a survey of the previous studies on these influences. Finally, a case study for Egypt is discussed.
An overview of the large-scale aspects of the climate in the Mediterranean is presented in Chapter 4. Specifically, Mokssit presents an analysis for the development of priority climate indices for Africa because of the fact that the south coast of the Mediterranean basin belongs to the geography of Africa. J. Palutikof presents the analysis of Mediterranean climate data with the object of understanding the trends in observations, as well as the relationship between the present and future climates.
Luterbacher and Xoplaki analyse the winter temperature and its variability over the area for the last 500 years and their connection to the large-scale atmospheric circulation. Since the twentieth century has the most reliable data, it is important to know the annual and seasonal scale trends of the precipitation over the Basin.
Dirk Koslowsky closes the chapter presenting the existing 12-year satellite data set. The satellite data set is a promising technique to understand the climate in an area.
Chapter 5 deals with the regional aspects of the climate in the Mediterranean. Turkes examines the spatial and