Comparison of the changes of diurnal temperature range in 1971–2024 in different climatic regions of Europe

The increasing trend of mean temperature values is clearly detectable in the recent decades throughout Europe. Moreover, the minimum and maximum temperatures increased as well, but the magnitude of their changes can be different, which results in the changes of diurnal temperature range (DTR). As high DTR values may have negative effects on human health due to the possible lack of adaptability, especially elderly or children, its analysis is an important topic.

In the present study, the changes of DTR are analysed for four European regions, characterized by different climatic conditions: (i) boreal Southern Finland, (ii) oceanic Ireland, (iii) continental Hungary, and (iv) Mediterranean Ebro Basin in Northeastern Spain. Daily minimum and maximum temperature values from the observation based E-OBS and HuClim datasets were used for the analysis. The average and extreme DTR is calculated for each month for 1971–2024, and the changes are determined between the 1971–1990 and 2005–2024 time periods.

According to our results, the annual mean of DTR decreased in Southern Finland and Ireland during 1971–2024, as the increase of minimum temperature was higher than the increase of maximum temperature on average. The monthly changes were rather moderate (< 0.8 °C) in Ireland, while in Southern Finland, greater decrease occurred in the winter months. On the contrary, in the Ebro Basin and in Hungary, the increase of maximum temperature was higher, therefore, the annual mean of DTR increased in the recent decades. The increase of maximum temperature was higher than the increase of minimum temperature in every month, with especially greater difference from April to June in the Ebro Basin.

 

Acknowledgements. This work has been implemented by the National Multidisciplinary Laboratory for Climate Change (RRF-2.3.1-21-2022-00014) project within the framework of Hungary's National Recovery and Resilience Plan supported by the Recovery and Resilience Facility of the European Union. In addition, this study has been supported by the European Climate Fund (G-2409-68866).