SNOW COVER CHANGES IN THE LITTLE CARPATHIANS IN SLOVAKIA

The Little Carpathians represent relatively isolated 80 km long mountains in south-western Slovakia with mean altitude of their ridge about 600 m and steep slopes. Observations from 20 stations have been utilized for areal and temporal snow cover analysis (3 of them with complete observations since 1921 and 6 since 1951, all other stations have shorter periods of observations, insignificantly interrupted series, or they have already closed their operation). After analysis of selected series we came into conclusion to reconstruct daily snow cover time series from October 1950 to April 1990 and from October 1990 to April 2004 (without and with influence of supposed climate change). The results showed that in spite of significant increase in temperature means and some decrease in precipitation totals in the November to March season no remarkable decrease in snow cover conditions occurred after 1990. Only selected results are presented in this extended abstract