Liviu APOSTOL¹& Lucian SFÎCĂ^1
1Department of Geography, Faculty of Geography and Geology, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University
apostolliv@yahoo.com, sfical@yahoo.com

THERMAL DIFFERENTIATIONS INDUCED BY THE CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS ON THE ROMANIAN TERRITORY

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This study propose to bring new data and information about the way the Carpathian chain influences the temperature distribution on the territory of Romania. Among the effects of the Carpathianchain on the climate elements in Romania, we notice the development of the foehn processes of theAtlantic origin air masses east of the Carpathians, and also the barrier effect against the continental airmasses that cannot advance west. For this, we comparatively analyzed the hourly temperatures for the2001-2009 periods, registered at 4 weather stations, in the east (Iasi), south (Râmnicu-Vâlcea) and west(Cluj-Napoca şi Sibiu) of the country. The analysis was done on yearly, monthly and hourly data, leadingthus to a general image of the thermal differences generated by the Carpathian Mountains. In this mannerwe have observed that the negative differences between Iaşi and Cluj-Napoca reach almost 30% of thehourly observations with a maximum of 42.7% in January. In the mean time the annual share of the samedifferences is just about 21.7% - with 29.9% in January - between Râmnicu-Vâlcea and Sibiu. Synopticsituations when the biggest differentiations occur were also analyzed.