The project-weather climate and hydrological indicators Istat

The present paper illustrates the National Institute of Statistics (Istat) research project entitled "Meteo-climatic and hydrologic indicators" carried out in 2008. Since 1926, Istat disseminates meteorological data collected from gauging stations located over the whole Italian territory. The aims of this project (included in the National Statistical Program 2008-2010 and conducted with the partnership of Cra-Cma) are to implement a geographic data-warehouse with meteorological and hydrological daily values measured since 1951 from the stations of both national (i.e. Mipaaf, Smam, Apat) and regional (e.g. rural development agencies, research institutes) services. Based on the results of statistical data collecting, checking and imputation of lacking values, the data-warehouse will allow to estimate the main climate variables at high spatial resolution. Finally, a set of indicators regarding the interaction of climate with biological, agronomic, pedological and hydrological themes will be estimated, through down-scaling approaches, at administrative spatial scales (e.g. municipalities, local labour systems, agricultural homogeneous regions) in order to achieve integration with other statistical (e.g. socio-economic) variables obtained at that scale.