Wind speed and temperature trends impacts on reference evapotranspiration in Southern Italy

In this study, the impacts of both temperature and wind speed trends on reference evapotranspiration have been assessed using as a case study the Southern Italy, which present a wide variety of combination of such climatic variables trends in terms of direction and magnitude. The existence of statistically significant trends in wind speed and temperature from observational datasets, measured in ten stations over Southern Italy during the period 1968–2004, has been investigated. Time series have been examined using the Mann–Kendall nonparametric statistical test in order to detect possible evidences of wind speed and temperature trends at different temporal resolution and significance level. Once trends have been examined and quantified, the effects of these trends on seasonal reference evapotranspiration have been evaluated using the FAO-56 Penman–Monteith equation. Results quantified the effects of extrapolated temperature and wind speed trends on reference evapotranspiration. Where these climatic drivers are on the same direction, reference evapotranspiration generally increases during the growing season due to a nonlinear overlapping of effects. Whereas wind speed decreases and temperature increases, there is a sort of counterbalancing effect between the two considered climatic forcing in determining future reference evapotranspiration.