Agro-climatic analysis and integration with different data sources: A case study in Italy

The aim of this paper is to illustrate an empirical application from the project "Meteo-climatic and hydrological indicators" carried out by Istat on the behalf of the National Statistical Programme in collaboration with Cra-Cma. Istat is actually setting up a climatic data-warehouse containing data (1951-2000) from more than 4,000 meteorological stations covering the whole Italian territory. The present study presents an agro-climatic example of the regionalisation of statistical indicators at the regional (i.e. Nuts-2) level (Latium, central Italy). From elementary data of daily rainfall and temperature measured by gauging stations of the national (i.e. ex Simn, Smam, Mipaf-Ucea) and regional (i.e. Arsial) meteorological services the average annual rainfall rate and mean annual reference evapotranspiration were derived referring to two standard periods (i.e. 1951-70 and 1981-2000). The standard aridity index (following Unep) was estimated from the ratio between the two variables. Latium municipalities were classified based on the climate aridity classification. Worsening dryness conditions were clearly observed along the coastal rim and in the neighbour, rural lowlands belonging to the provinces of Rome and Viterbo. The empirical application highlights the importance to integrate agro-climatic and other agro-environmental indicators with socio-economic information collected from statistical (e.g. national censuses) sources. Further applications at local, regional, and national scales were finally discussed.