| ABSTRACT | Ecosystems and human societies in the Mediterranean region this region are strongly impacted by weather driven natural hazards, such as droughts and heatwaves, which are expected to increase in frequency and amplitude under climate change. Whilst newly available datasets and recent research efforts have significantly boosted our knowledge of past trends in Mediterranean, the analysis of observed changes in climate extremes still shows a rather controversial picture. Here I present an updated review of the observed past evolution of climate extremes and droughts, based on an assessment of the observed climate-change hotspots (1), taking into account the differences in a range of precipitation and temperature statistical parameters (mean, variability, and extremes). Natural vegetation, agricultural production and forest fires are significantly influenced by climate variability and extremes. An increasing number of studies advancing the understanding on the impacts of climate variability/droughts on crop production and on forest fires have been recently published (see e.g. 2, 3 and 4) and are discussed here. These studies represent a necessary step to assess the resilience of ecosystems and agricultural production systems to future climate conditions with adaptation measures taken on monthly to seasonal and decadal time scales. Seasonal climate forecast, when provided in a climate-services context, can enable a more effective adaptation to climate variability and change, offering an under-exploited opportunity to minimise the impacts of adverse climate conditions. Examples addressing the seasonal prediction of fire risk (5) and crop yield (6) will be briefly described. REFERENCES: (1) Turco, M., et al. Observed climate change hotspots. Geophys Res Let (2015) (2) Turco, M., et al. Climate change impacts on wildfires in a Mediterranean environment. Clim change (2014) (3) Turco, M., et al. Recent changes and relations among drought, vegetation and wildfires in the Eastern Mediterranean: the case of Israel. Global Planet Change. Revision pending (2016a) (4) Ceglar, A., et al. Impact of meteorological drivers on regional inter-annual crop yield variability in France. Agricultural For Meteor (2016). (5) Marcos, et al. Seasonal predictability of summer fires in a Mediterranean environment. Int. J. Wildland Fire (2015) (6) Turco, M., et al. Seasonal predictability of meteorological drought over Europe. In preparation. (2016b) |