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RECENT CHANGES IN THE SNOW COVER DURATION IN BULGARIA - PRELIMINARY RESULTS
Abstract
Snow cover is an indicator of the fluctuating climate, resulting from the change in the regime of winter precipitations and air temperatures. Our previous studies have revealed significant decreasing of the seasonal snow cover maxima and the precipitation amounts in the highest mountainous regions of Bulgaria, which is however not so strong at lower altitudes. Current research summarizes our last findings about one other characteristic of the snow cover - its duration. This is presented as annual number of days with snow cover with different heights. We have used 62 weather stations with altitudes ranging from 20 up to 2376 m a.s.l. Statistical analysis is performed in order to assess the variability and possible differences in the investigated characteristic from long-term data series for two main climatological periods 1961-90 and 1991-2020. The general tendency for the whole country is a decreasing trend, more pronounced at the northwest and north parts of Bulgaria with some opposite exceptions with much smaller magnitude at some isolated places at northeast and south. Remarkable decreasing of the snow cover days in comparison with the period 1961-1990 has been encountered in the mountainous regions - in the regions of Koprivshtitza (Stara planina) and Cherni vrah (Vitosha Mountain) the decline is almost one month. We have investigated the mean annual number of snow cover days in three different height categories - all days with snow cover, and those above the limits 15 and 30 cm. Some of the results are presented graphically as maps of the current stage together with the deviation from the previous climatic periods. This investigation is part of a project for investigation of the current variability of the snow cover and was funded by the Bulgarian National Science Fund in the call for young and post-doctoral researchers under contract number DM14/1.
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