Long-term relationships between air flow indices and air temperature over Southeast Poland

摘要

This paper concerns the relationships between selected circulation indices and air temperature over Southeast Poland between 1871-2010. The geostrophic wind speed and the resultant vorticity were computed based on daily gridded fields of mean sea-level pressure over an area defined from 5 degrees 20' to 40'20'E and from 41 degrees 15' to 61 degrees 15'N. The highest daily mean geostrophic wind speed over Southeast Poland is observed from December to February. In turn, the maximum (positive) values of the resultant vorticity occur in April and May, while the minimum (negative) values are observed in January. Mean air temperature from November to February has a strong positive correlation with the geostrophic wind speed. Moreover, the occurrence of the highest coefficients regarding the correlation between the geostrophic wind speed and air temperature in winter as well as the NAO index was recorded at the beginning of the 21st century. This suggests that the range of impact of sea-level pressure distribution over the North Atlantic on the winter air temperature over Southeast Poland may have increased over the last decades. One of the causes may be an eastward shift of the position of the center of the Icelandic Low and the Azores High in the period from December to February.