## 4 Discussion
The strong anti-correlation found for spring could be justified by the fact that irradiance and air temperature increase during this season, decreasing SMC on the one hand and increasing ET\({}_{0}\) on the other. A strong anti-correlation was also found for autumn, but this is probably due to different physical reasons than in the case of spring. In fact, the values for irradiance and ambient temperature decrease during this season, leading in parallel to a decrease in ET\({}_{0}\) and an increase in the residence time of water in the soil. The results for the summer season, however, deserve separate consideration. The different statistical character of the results for this season could be due to the fact that in summer most SMC daily values correspond to the wilting point, the amount of water not available for evaporation and transpiration, which introduces a bias into the data thus rendering meaningless the attempt to obtain statistically significant results. Indeed, inconsistency in the sign and modulus of the correlation coefficients was found between years and between the two sites. Finally, the fact that the coefficients of the fitting lines in the respective seasons (for all twenty years of data) for the two sites showed consistency in modulus and sign suggests that the fitting line found for the Paterno case study could also fit the Busachi case study and vice versa, although there is a difference in latitude of almost 3\({}^{\circ}\) between these two sites. This fact can be justified by the fact that the two places as well as the islands have the same climate. This makes it possible to claim that through the empirical relationships derived here, diurnal profiles of ET\({}_{0}\) can be estimated from SMC diurnal data for other regions that share the same climate with the places analyzed here and whose soil textures are typical of Mediterranean flora, albeit at somewhat different latitudes than those of the case studies in this paper. The added advantage of these empirical relationships is that ET\({}_{0}\) profiles can be obtained for a given weather-simulated season or year using daily SMC values as input, without having to use formulae that consider meteorological data that are not always available from satellite or in situ measurements. Analyses of seasonal and annual hourly rainfall trends, as well as evaluation of the number of extreme rainfall events, suggest that there is less precipitation in Busachi than in Paterno. This fact has implications for the statistical significance of Busachi's historical data in terms of intense rainfall events, which are rarer in Busachi and require a longer time span than the twenty years considered (although all hourly rainfall data available in [28] were used). Finally, the historical hourly precipitation profiles show that the cumulative precipitation amounts tend to decrease on an annual and seasonal basis at both locations studied (with the exception of autumn, where a slight increase is observed). These observations are consistent with several scientific papers that use climate model projections to define the Mediterranean as a hotspot of global warming, with a significant increase in air temperature values and increasingly frequent and prolonged droughs [18]. As the amount of precipitation in the Mediterranean decreases, hydropower generation is increasingly constrained, leading to an increased risk of inadequate power systems in the various Mediterranean countries. Future research must therefore address the analysis of historical precipitation trends in Mediterranean countries and future climate projections for precipitation patterns so that power system operators can plan effective responses to this problem in the medium and long term. As for the Monte Carlo simulations, the synthetic hourly precipitation profiles reproduced well the statistical properties of the historical hourly profiles for both sites.