| ABSTRACT | The Mediterranean Sea, with a population of 150 million on its coasts and receiving 170 million tourists every year, is one of the most exposed regions in the world to sea level variations, both derived from long term processes, such as climate change, or from catastrophic short-term events like storm surges, tsunamis and meteo-tsunamis.
The present study is an initial fair trial to get closer to the weather extremes over some Mediterranean coastal areas off Egypt . It focuses on changes in extreme temperature, precipitation and sea level events over Alexandria region during the period 1974-2011.
The results of the present study declared three extreme events in the area of investigation; the scarce precipitation in the year 1999 associated with three heat waves in April, August and November of the same year. The extreme high precipitation, on the other hand, has been recorded in the year 2004. Finally, the extreme surge elevation in winter 2010 has also been revealed.
The minimum amount of precipitation was recorded in 1999 (24.37 mm) in only 9 days, i.e. 2.71 mm/rainy day. This is extremely lower than the normal rate which is 5 mm/rainy day. In this year 3 heat wave periods were observed during April (> 26-30°C, 5 days), August (> 30°C, 7 days) and November (> 26°C, 5 days). The year 2004 has the extreme high winter precipitation (368.80 mm) event over the period of investigation, of them 161.05 mm of rain during December in 7 days, i.e. 23.00 mm/rainy day.
The astronomical tidal elevation during December 2009 ranged between -6.30 cm and 6.56 cm, while the surge varied between 33.90 cm and 103.85 cm. The strong surge (more than 1m) as well as violent waves caused severe damages along Alexandria coast in winter 2010. |