Sorin Cheval

National Institute for Research and Development in Forestry “Marin Dracea”

Land degradation (LD) and desertification (DS) are a sensitive global issue including southern and south-eastern Europe, which is severely affected by climate change. In this study, a state-of-the-art approach for assessing the intensity of LD and DS processes using remote-sensing-derived indicators within a GIS environment was proposed. The analys...

The pressure on natural resources including water, energy and land is continuously growing through changes in climate and land use. Representatives of academia, industry, governments and society need to join forces in order to develop new pathways towards sustainable natural resource use and management. Such pathways start from the basic idea that...

The pressure on natural resources including water, energy and land is continuously growing through changes in climate and land use. Representatives of academia, industry, governments and society need to join forces in order to develop new pathways towards sustainable natural resource use and management. Such pathways start from the basic idea that...

The response of the cryosphere to a warmer climate is spatially diversified and requires accurate monitoring and understanding. The study analyses the changes in snow cover phenology (the first and last snow cover days - FSC and LSC), duration (SCD, SCDmax) and snow-free days (SFD) in Romania, which includes wide parts of the Carpathian Mountain ra...

Over the last decades, climatic changes have triggered considerable impacts across the globe with detrimental effects on all ecosystems. Given the complexity of topography and climate, Romania is one of the most exposed countries in the South‐Eastern Europe to extreme hydrological events. As a consequence, the spatial distribution of precipitation...

In this study, we consider the historical climatological time series available in the meteorological yearbooks of the Royal Hungarian Central Institute of Meteorology and Earth Magnetism, first published in 1871. Data quality improvement of historical data includes the homogenization process with outlier checks and data gap filling by applying the...

This study discusses the preliminary assessment of Indoor Cooling Degree Necessity (ICDN) based upon the standard air temperature (Ta) value of 22 °C which is defined to be the standard upper mean temperature limit (Tl) for interior comfort as defined by the WHO. By considering indoor air temperature (TaI), levelled oscillations above Tl are utilis...

The output extracted from CNRM, MPR, and ICHEC Global Circulation Models for RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 Representative Concentration Pathways has been used in conjunction with the SWAT model for evaluating the impacts of future climate changes on hydrological processes in a Romanian catchment (Neajlov, 3720 km2 area) in the short (2021–2050) and long term...

In the last decades, anthropogenic drivers have significantly influenced the natural climate variability of Earth's atmosphere. Climate change has become a subject of major interest for different levels of our society, such as national governments, businesses, local administration, or citizens. While national and local policies propose mitigation a...

Natural hazards, including droughts, are processes and phenomena that can trigger a negative impact on the environment, society and various economic sectors. The present chapter aims to identify spatial peculiarities of drought characteristics (frequency, duration, affected area) and to analyse drought hazard, vulnerability and risk in the Lower Da...

Decision-makers need tailored information regarding future climate, land use, forest management, and societal scenarios for sustainable watershed management. Such information can be attained by integrating the water-energy-land nexus approach with climate services. To support decision-makers from Brașov metropolitan area (Romania), we co-developed...

Decision-makers need tailored information regarding future climate, land use, forest management and societal scenarios for sustainable watershed management. Such information can be attained by integrating the water-energy-land nexus approach with climate services. To support decision-makers from Brașov metropolitan area (Romania), we co-developed l...

The landscape naturalness may be defined and analysed by various concepts and methods attempting to encapsulate as much as possible the degree of natural conditions over a given territory. The Machado Index (MI) was developed by the Spanish biologist Antonio Machado and uses a qualitative approach to naturalness, being characterized by its versatil...

Four climate parameters (i.e. maximum, mean and minimum air temperature and precipitation amount) from 10 regional climate models, provided by the EURO-CORDEX initiative, are adjusted using as reference the ROCADA gridded dataset. The adjustment was performed on a daily temporal resolution for the historical period (1971–2005), as well as for clima...

This publication can be quoted as: Máñez Costa, M.; Oen, A.M.P.; Neset, T.-S.; Celliers, L.; Suhari, M; Huang-Lachmann, J-T.; Pimentel, R.; Blair, B.; Jeuring, J.; Rodriguez-Camino, E.; Photiadou, C.; Columbié, Y.J.; Gao, C.; Tudose, N.-C.; Cheval, S., Votsis, A.; West, J.; Lee, K.; Shaffrey, L.C.; Auer, C.; Hoff, H.; Menke, I.; Walton, P.; Schuck-...

This article provides the first country-scale climatology of the Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) investigated across the cities with more than 30,000 inhabitants from Romania using using the MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) data set developed within the Land Surface Temperature Climate Change Initiative (CCI) project (LST_cci), funded by Europ...

Precipitation has a strong and constant impact on different economic sectors, environment and social activities all over the world. An increasing interest for monitoring and estimating the precipitation characteristics can be claimed in the last decades. However, in some areas, the ground-based network is still sparse and the spatial data coverage...

The PannEx is a GEWEX-initiated, community driven research network in the Pannonian Basin. One of the main scientific issues to address in PannEx is the investigation of precipitation extremes. Meteorological Services in the PannEx area collected the hourly precipitation data and commonly used a computer program, which was developed in the INTENSE...

This study aims to build and test the adaptability and reliability of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool hydrological model in a small mountain forested watershed. This ungauged watershed covers 184 km 2 and supplies 90% of blue water for the Brașov metropolitan area, the second largest metropolitan area of Romania. After building a custom database...

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundr...

The Southern Carpathians (Romania) are one of the highest, steepest and most massive sectors of the Carpathian Mountains, with a strong imprint of the Pleistocene glaciation, which are widely affected by a broad spectrum of natural hazards (avalanches, rock wall weathering and landslides, flash floods). This paper focuses on the detection of recent...

Precipitation has a strong and constant impact on different economic sectors, environment, and social activities all over the world. An increasing interest for monitoring and estimating the precipitation characteristics can be claimed in the last decades. However, in some areas the ground-based network is still sparse and the spatial data coverage...

Facing the impacts of climate change and urbanization, adaptation and resilience to climate extremes have become important issues of global concern. [...]

This paper investigates the elevation‐warming relationships across the Carpathian Mountains, using the 0.1° × 0.1° gridded daily air temperature dataset developed within the CARPATCLIM project, in order to understand the spatial patterns of annual and seasonal temperature trends and test the hypothesis of enhanced warming with elevation. Temperatur...

This study investigates the influence of the urban lakes from Bucharest (Romania) on the microclimate of their hinterland using satellite remote sensing products. The land surface temperature (LST) at 30 m spatial resolution was retrieved from Landsat TM and TIRS imagery referring to clear-sky conditions over the study area. The influence of the ur...

The Landsat 8 satellites have retrieved land surface temperature (LST) resampled at a 30-m spatial resolution since 2013, but the urban climate studies frequently use a limited number of images due to the problems related to missing data over the city of interest. This paper endorses a procedure for building a long-term gap-free LST data set in an...

Significant progress in tornado research and management can be claimed over the last few decades worldwide. However, tornado forecasting and warning continue to be permanent challenges for most European national meteorological services because they require particular skills and experience. Moreover, tornado warnings may generate panic. Therefore, o...

Studiul de față își propune să evalueze tendința de modificare a proceselor hidrologice din bazinul hidrografic Tărlungul Superior prin utilizarea modelului hidrologic Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) pentru intervalul 2020-2100. În urma procedurilor de calibrare și validare, s-a obținut o bună performanță a modelului SWAT în simularea procese...

Data recovery and climate reconstruction are an important support for climate change research, as they provide information from periods and areas with sparse meteorological networks. Various sources are currently in use for obtaining valuable evidence of past climate, such as ship logs, diaries, books monastery documents. This study exploits newspa...

This study has analysed the development of the urban heat island (UHI) under various synoptic scale atmospheric circulation for two large cities – Prague in central Europe and Bucharest in south-eastern Europe, including seasonal differences and long-term changes. At the best of our knowledge, it is the first comparison between two European cities...

This study aims to identify future trends in changing patterns of air temperature and rainfall after applying two global climate scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) embedded in four regional climate models adjusted for Tarlung river upper basin (Carpathian Mountains). The adopted climate models were developed through integrating the climate scenarios int...

Studies regarding species distribution, resilience and adaptability of different ecosystems as well as the response of human society are linked with our ability to identify past and predict future changes. Climate change together with other changes like land use and land cover, and invasive alien species, are important to set up the background for...

Various environmental factors influence the outbreak and spread of epidemic or even pandemic events which, in turn, may cause feedbacks on the environment. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic on 13 March 2020 and its rapid onset, spatial extent and complex consequences make it a once-in-a-century global disaster. Most c...

A reliable and practically useable method for gap filling in hourly Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI LST) data using ERA5 Land Skin Temperature (ERA5ST) co-variate and additional easily accessible data (elevation, time, solar radiation info) is proposed. The suggested approach provides estimates to all weather conditions and it...

An increasing plethora of both meteorological and ancillary data are presently available for climate research and applications in urban areas. The data are often held by local or national institutions (i.e. meteorological services, universities or environmental agencies). This paper outlines a total number of 33 datasets, organized into three main...

Daily and sub‐daily homogenization of climate variables have been intensively investigated in the last decades, but to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on homogenization of hourly temperature in Romania. This paper describes the creation of a homogenized hourly air temperature data set at a country scale by combining data from fou...

This study presents the meteorological information spanning the last two decades of the end of 19th century (1880-1900) extracted from three Romanian newspapers (România Liberă, Gazeta de Transilvania and Foaia Poporului). It describes the characteristics of the newspaper data included in the database, it offers and overview of the meteorological n...

The water-energy-land nexus requires long-sighted approaches that help avoid maladaptive pathways to ensure its promise to deliver insights and tools that improve policy-making. Climate services can form the foundation to avoid myopia in nexus studies by providing information about how climate change will alter the balance of nexus resources and th...

The climate conditions may contribute significantly to the generation of several hazards in mountain areas, such as landslides, wildfires, flash floods and avalanches. This study examines the variation of the main meteorological parameters with impact on avalanche triggering conditions at Bâlea-Lac Meteorological Station. To the best of our knowled...

UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) technologies are currently mature proven by their use in both civilian and military fields. Atmospheric monitoring involves certain technical and operational conditions and limitations of UAVs, especially in situations involving static and quasi-static flight, and the performance level of the sensors determines the de...

This study investigates the Black Sea influence on the thermal characteristics of its western hinterland based on satellite imagery acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The marine impact on the land surface temperature (LST) values is detected at daily, seasonal and annual time scales, and a strong linkage with the...

Complex and numerous parameters influence the hydrological systems, triggering difficulties in understanding their linkages and functions. Therefore, hydrologists have developed various hydrological modeling techniques (Xu, 2002, Woessner, 2012) and more than that, recently, inverse hydrological modeling. A major reason for applying inverse models...

The aim of this study was to better understand the unsaturated zone of a karst massif habitat for aquatic fauna by defining patterns of cave drip flow rates. Dripping was logged over a period of four years at three points inside Ciur‐Izbuc Cave (north‐western Romania). Drip rates have been analyzed at different scales, and also compared to rainfall...

As part of the COST Action HOME a dataset has been generated that will serve as a benchmark for homogenisation algorithms. Members of the Action and third parties have been invited and are still welcome to homogenise this dataset. The results of this exercise was analysed to obtain recommendations for a standard homogenisation procedure and are des...

Urban settlements induce major disturbances in the regional climate and generate particular living conditions for the population. The high heterogeneity of the urban environment gives rise to a corresponding mixture of intra-urban climate characteristics, depending on factors like meteorological context, urban geometry and land cover/land use. Intr...

The crop evapotranspiration computing is a complex matter from many points of view, but also it represents a useful parameter in hydrological and climate studies. Due to climate changes, the natural systems are coming to be negatively affected. The seasonal and annual crop evapotranspiration under current climate (1991-2020) and future climate (202...

Bucharest is one of the European cities most at risk of being affected by meteorological hazards. Heat or cold waves, extreme temperature events, heavy rains or prolonged precipitation deficits are all-season phenomena, triggering damages, discomfort or even casualties. Temperature hazards may occur annually and challenge equally the public, local...

Bucharest is one of the European cities most at risk of being affected by meteorological hazards. Heat or cold waves, extreme temperature events, heavy rains or prolonged precipitation deficits are all-season phenomena, triggering damages, discomfort or even casualties. Temperature hazards may occur annually and challenge equally the public, local...

Bucharest is one of the European cities most at risk of being affected by meteorological hazards. Heat or cold waves, extreme temperature events, heavy rains or prolonged precipitation deficits are all-season phenomena, triggering damages, discomfort or even casualties. Temperature hazards may occur annually and challenge equally the public, local...

Past and projected variability of the air temperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration and aridity in the South-Eastern Europe are evaluated throughout 1961–2050. Changes in aridity are estimated by means of five indices: de Martonne Aridity Index, UNEP Aridity Index, Pinna Combinative Index, Johansson Continentality Index and Kerner Oceanity Ind...

Season duration is one of the most important climatic characteristics of any region and among the most requested information by many economic sectors such as agriculture, forestry, energy, tourism and recreation, etc. Shifts in season duration represent the regional climate changes and depend on complex of many hydrometeorological factors. Therefor...

The impact of climate on crop evapotranspiration (ETc) was assessed in the Pannonian basin for the present (1991–2020) and future (2021–2050). Annual temperature, annual precipitation and monthly potential evapotranspiration are the main climate data used in the present study. The European land cover database was used for the spatial recognition of...

Extreme hot events and heat waves occur frequently in Bucharest during the warm season, triggering significant heat stress and thermal risks, especially in buildings with inappropriate ventilation, while climate change scenarios agree upon the warming trend along the next decades. This study investigates the impact of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) on...

The influence of the Black Sea on the continental climate is generally limited, comparatively with other maritime basins. Nevertheless, the influence is important for local scale environment, with several applications in the economy, i.e. building industry, agriculture, forestry. The extension of the Black Sea influence inside the Dobroudja Plateau...

In this study, the annual and seasonal crop evapotranspiration at the spatial level of the Carpathian Region were evaluated over 1961–2010. The temperature, precipitation and actual evapotranspiration grid monthly climate data and land cover were analysed and processed on a seasonal basis to compute the annual crop evapotranspiration. The land cove...

In this study, the annual and seasonal crop evapotranspiration at the spatial level of the Carpathian Region were evaluated over 1961–2010. The temperature, precipitation and actual evapotranspiration grid monthly climate data and land cover were analysed and processed on a seasonal basis to compute the annual crop evapotranspiration. The land cove...

At twenty years after its launch, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is intensively used both in fundamental studies and practical applications. It is implemented operationally in numerous Hydrological and Meteorological Services, being considered a universal drought index. This overview covers the interval 1993-2012, it focuses mainly on t...

A new assessment method of groundwater vulnerability was done using multilayer data analysis through GIS Spatial Analyst Tools. The method presented here refers at Beliș district territory and describes two tasks: (1) groundwater vulnerability determination from Water Surplus, Ecosystem Services, Aquifers map, and Infiltration map; (2) the future v...

This chapter is organized in four sections, which refer to the homogenization algorithm applied to the meteorological data, the statistical methods, the spatialisation methods used to derive the climatological maps and the regional climate models used to derive the future changes in the climate of the Romanian Carpathians. The homogenization was do...

The chapter is organized in two sections. The first section overviews the main impulses, initiatives and achievements in global and European environmental research targeting mountain regions since the early 1970s until 2012 (the Rio +20 Conference). This section also highlights how the growing significance of the climate change issue in global envi...

Several indices of climate extremes – based on minimum and maximum temperature, daily precipitation and daily snow cover – were used in order to check for changes over 1961–2010. The most important changes were found in maximum and (to a lesser extent) in minimum seasonal temperature. The warming signal is well retrieved in the trends in thermal-re...

This chapter briefly presents the changes of the air temperature and precipitation amounts predicted by Regional Climate Models for the next decades over the Romanian Carpathians. The analysis refers to the IPCC Scenario A1B, and exploits the outputs of several European projects developed in the recent years. The air temperature is likely to increa...

This chapter outlines the importance of three major factors and the effects of their joint action in defining local and regional climatic features of the Romanian Carpathians: latitude and longitude, topography and the regional atmospheric circulation. The chapter summarizes the role of latitude and longitude in shaping the distribution of the dire...

This chapter provides a description of the main climatic conditions of the Romanian Carpathians region based on the analysis of the regime of the most important climatic parameters such as air temperature, precipitation, wind and snow. The regional climatic patterns are discussed in terms of elevation effect, influence of the prevailing atmospheric...

Developed as the most extended and contorted sector of the European Alpine System, the Carpathians represent a complex natural environment whose present-day morphology is marked by active human intervention. Their limits and subdivisions were subjected to numerous geomorphic classifications, meant to separate heterogeneous units characterized by co...

This chapter analyses the recent climatic trends in the Romanian Carpathians, with an accent on seasonal changes. Temperature trends are increasing in winter, spring and summer, while they are completely absent in autumn, which is the single stable season from a thermal point of view. On the other hand, autumn is the only season when significant in...

The summer surface urban heat island (SUHI) of the city of Bucharest (Romania) is investigated in terms of its shape, intensity, extension and links to land cover. The study employs land surface temperature (LST) data retrieved by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors aboard the Terra (EOS AM-1) and Aqua (EOS PM-1) NASA...

This paper overviews the development of the solar radiation monitoring network in Romania, stressing the milestones, the current configuration and utility. In 1879, Ștefan C. Hepites, the most prominent figure and pioneer of the Romanian meteorology, founded a meteorological station in his courtyard from Regală Street, in respect of all the recomme...