Relationship of Weather Types on the Seasonal and Spatial Variability of Rainfall, Runoff, and Sediment Yield in the Western Mediterranean Basin

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http://hdl.handle.net/2183/25877Collections
- Investigación (FCIE) [1160]
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Relationship of Weather Types on the Seasonal and Spatial Variability of Rainfall, Runoff, and Sediment Yield in the Western Mediterranean BasinDate
2020-06-09Citation
Peña-Angulo, D., Nadal-Romero, E., González-Hidalgo, J. C., Albaladejo, J., Andreu, V., Bahri, H., … Campo, J. (2020). Relationship of Weather Types on the Seasonal and Spatial Variability of Rainfall, Runoff, and Sediment Yield in the Western Mediterranean Basin. Atmosphere, 11(6), 609. doi:10.3390/atmos11060609
Abstract
[Abstract] Rainfall is the key factor to understand soil erosion processes, mechanisms, and rates.
Most research was conducted to determine rainfall characteristics and their relationship with
soil erosion (erosivity) but there is little information about how atmospheric patterns control soil
losses, and this is important to enable sustainable environmental planning and risk prevention.
We investigated the temporal and spatial variability of the relationships of rainfall, runo ,
and sediment yield with atmospheric patterns (weather types, WTs) in the western Mediterranean
basin. For this purpose, we analyzed a large database of rainfall events collected between 1985 and
2015 in 46 experimental plots and catchments with the aim to: (i) evaluate seasonal di erences in
the contribution of rainfall, runo , and sediment yield produced by the WTs; and (ii) to analyze
the seasonal e ciency of the di erent WTs (relation frequency and magnitude) related to rainfall,
runo , and sediment yield. The results indicate two di erent temporal patterns: the first weather
type exhibits (during the cold period: autumn and winter) westerly flows that produce the highest
rainfall, runo , and sediment yield values throughout the territory; the second weather type exhibits
easterly flows that predominate during the warm period (spring and summer) and it is located on the
Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula. However, the cyclonic situations present high frequency
throughout the whole year with a large influence extended around the western Mediterranean basin.
Contrary, the anticyclonic situations, despite of its high frequency, do not contribute significantly to
the total rainfall, runo , and sediment (showing the lowest e ciency) because of atmospheric stability
that currently characterize this atmospheric pattern. Our approach helps to better understand the
relationship of WTs on the seasonal and spatial variability of rainfall, runo and sediment yield with
a regional scale based on the large dataset and number of soil erosion experimental stations.
Keywords
Weather types
Rainfall
Runoff
Erosion
Sediment yield
Seasonal analyses
Mediterranean basin
Rainfall
Runoff
Erosion
Sediment yield
Seasonal analyses
Mediterranean basin
Editor version
Rights
Atribución 4.0 España
ISSN
2073-4433