The Relationship Between the Sava River Basin Annual Precipitation, its Discharge and the Large-Scale Atmospheric Circulation

Summary The Sava river annual precipitation field and the discharge anomalies in the Sava river catchment are compared to each other and to mean sea-level pressure anomalies over Europe. In addition to a correlation analysis a clustering technique is used for the time series from 1901–1990. Discharge data are available only for the period 1931–1990. As expected, a high correlation exists between the Sava river discharge and precipitation, but also, remarkable correlation is found between air pressure anomalies and Sava river precipitation. Grouping the years into four classes, the correlation is shown to be especially high for extreme events. A possible application of these results might be for the downscaling of long-lead climate anomaly forecasts. Received November 30, 1995 Revised May 21, 1998