Title: Different increasing trends of air and sea surface temperatures at small islands (Adriatic Sea, Croatia)

Abstract

An island is defined as a land mass on all sides surrounded by water. As a consequence of being separated from the continental land mass, each island represents a climatologically and hydrologically restricted unit with exclusively local water balance. According to the UNESCO definition, in the hydrological sense, small islands are smaller than 1000 km2, while very small ones are those whose area is less than 100 km2. Within Croatia’s territorial Adriatic Sea waters, there are 79 islands, 525 islets, and 642 rocks, and rocks awash, which cover the area of 3195.71 km2, 62.41 km2, and 1.44 km2, respectively. In the Mediterranean Sea there are about 10.000 islands, approximately 250 of which are inhabited. Their social stability and the ecosystem sustainability are faced with climate change, especially global warming. The objective of this paper is to assess the differences in behaviour of air and sea surface temperatures variability and trends, at annual and monthly time scales, in different small and very small Adriatic Sea islands: (1) Krk; (2) Hvar; (3) Vis; (4) Biševo; (5) Lastovo; (6) Korčula; (7) Palagruža. General conclusion is that it is not only the island location that is important for heat regime formation, but also its size, height, geological setting and vegetation cover.