The climate of the Maltese Islands : a review

Abstract

In the Maltese Islands, as elsewhere, the climate shapes the natural landscape and influences human behaviour in a subtle but significant way. Yet, despite these tangible effects, it is not possible to portray climate in simple terms. The reason is that climate is an abstract notion whose elucidation depends on a number of physical concepts and quantitative factors. Lockwood (19740 defines the climate of a locality as the synthesis of the day to day values of the meteorological elements that affect the locality. This definition suggests that the synthesis should be of a period of time long enough (usually a number of decades) to establish frequencies of weather types, mean values, variances and probability of extreme events, with a high degree of reliability.