Abstract:In the Romanian Carpathians, there are only 6 massifs where glacial forms (valleys and cirques) occupy sufficiently large areas to support typical high altitude wetlands and snowbed vegetation. We have analyzed 424 relevées with this type of vegetation published in Romanian literature in the past century from these massifs. The cryophilic vegetation was grouped in 17 plant associations, 4 alliances and 3 Natura 2000 habitats. A total of 150 subalpine-alpine plant species (11 endemic) were registered in these communities (27% of the total 550 high mountain taxa found in the entire Romanian Carpathian range). Future scenarios for the glacial landforms of the Carpathians suggest a temperature increase of about 2. are the most exposed to the threat of climate warming, as the disappearance of their typical habitat would mean extinction. Aside from the endemic flora, other cryophilic alpine taxa are also threatened. Natura 2000 habitats typical to these landforms (6150, 7240* and 3220) are being monitored in all 6 massifs, but there are no current administrative measures to monitor the presence of cryophilic species or plans to place glacial landforms under strict protection (IUCN category 1a), measures needed as human impact is more and more present at high altitudes.

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Is the Indian summer present in Romania?The first part of the study refers to the occurrence of the Indian summer events in Romania, over the 1961-2019 period. The second part analyses the Indian summer event recorded in Romania in October 2019. The datasets used for the first part were daily maximum and minimum temperatures recorded in the past 59 years at 23 climatological weather stations, divided into 6 regions. Regarding the methodology, first step was to determine the annual and seasonal occurrence of the first frost for each weather station, and then the presence of the warm spells (WSs), based on the percentile threshold method. So, we could determine WSs with different types of intensity (using the 90 th , 95 th , 98 th percentile), and durations. For the Indian summer event recorded between 12 and 28 October 2019, daily maximum temperatures from 157 weather stations were compared to absolute maximum temperatures over the period 1961-2018. Synoptic conditions were determined using weather charts at sea level pressure, geopotential height and temperature of 925, 850, 700 and 500 hPa.The main finding is: Indian summer events are frequent in the Carpathians and in the Northern, Central and the Western regions of Romania, especially in November, followed by October; no matter the intensity, short duration events have high number of cases, and severe and extremely severe events were registered in the past 20 years; the Indian summer event from October 2019 was influenced by synoptic and local conditions, as well. Overall the Indian summer is not present in Romania every year, but it is more frequent and intense in the last 20 years.

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