Characterization of Temperature and Precipitation Fields over Sardinia with Principal Component Analysis and Singular Spectrum Analysis

A climatic analysis of temperature and precipitation ®elds in the Sardinia region is developed. The main purpose of this work is the characterization of temperature and precipitation ®elds to better understand Sardinia's climate. Principal component analysis (PCA) and singular spectrum analysis (SSA) have been applied to maximum and minimum temperature and to cumulative daily precipitation data collected in the Sardinia region during the period 1951±1992. It is shown that the most signi®cant temporal and spatial portion of temperature ®elds are described by the ®rst principal component of PCA; SSA of such a ®rst principal component reveals a 38 day oscillation in the region, related to the oscillations observed for planetary waves in the Northern Hemisphere. Precipitation ®elds are well represented by the ®rst three principal components of PCA. The cluster analysis of those principal components shows the plurimodality of precipitation distribution and the existence of conditions of a high total precipitation localized in Eastern Sardinia. # 1997 by the Royal Meteorological Society. Int. J. Climatol., 17: 1231±1262 (1997). (No. of Figures: 30 No. of Tables: 7 No. of References: 16)