Paper Title
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN AIR TEMPERATURE AND SNOW DEPTH OVER ROMANIA IN WINTER (1961-2019)

Abstract
Abstract - The purpose of this paper is to find out the relationship between the air temperature and snow depth trends in winter season (December-February)in Romania.The air temperature and snow depth trends, covering all historical-geographicalregions of Romania, as well as the correlation between these two parameters wereanalysed.The average monthly air temperature data was collected from the international set of meteorological data - CRU TS (Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia and Met Office), while the average monthly values of snow depthwere provided by Meteorological National Administration of Romania. The studied time series covers a relevant period of 59 years (1961-2019). The MAKESENS applicationfor tendency and R-squared coefficient (R²) for measure the correlation between the selected two parameterswere used. The results shown that during the investigated period, a significant increase in air temperature was noted (0.35 to 0.42°C/decade), being statistically significant at 0.01-0.001 level in all regions.On the other hand, all regions recorded a trend of decreasing of snow depth (-0.42 - -0.02 cm/decade), but excepting the Transylvania region the statistical significance levels were generally low. The most affected were the regions included in the northern half of Romania (Transylvania, Banat-Crișana, Maramureș and Moldavia) where the snow depth decreased by 30.3-57.7%, In the same regions theresults showed a good correlation between snow depth reduction and air temperature(R² = 0.42 - 0.51),which means that temperature has a large weight in explaining the decrease in snow cover (42-51 %).In the next decades the predictions shows a worsening in the trend of the two parameters which may have negative effects both on economy and environment. Keywords - Air temperature, Snow depth, Trend, Relationship, MAKESENS.