DATE2016-05-31 21:23:16
IDABSTRACT20160531212316-0982
CONTACTnastos@geol.uoa.gr
PRESENTATIONORAL-PARALLEL
INVITED0
IDSESSION4
TITLEFUTURE PROJECTIONS OF EXTREME PRECIPITATION OVER MEDITERRANEAN
AUTHORSPanagiotis T. Nastos (1), John Kapsomenakis (2), Christos S. Zerefos (1,2,3)
AFFILIATIONS
  1. Laboratory Of Climatology And Atmospheric Environment, Department Of Geology And Geoenviroment, National And Kapodistrian University Of Athens, Athens (Greece)
  2. Research Centre For Atmospheric Physics And Climatology, Academy Of Athens, Athens (Greece)
  3. Navarino Environmental Observatory, (neo), Messinia (Greece)
ABSTRACTThe Mediterranean, a region of frequent cyclonic activity, has experienced large seasonal and spatial variability of precipitation extremes, driven by orography, latent heat release at the sea surface and the prevailed synoptic conditions. Due to global warming, furious weather in the future is expected to be established over Mediterranean. The objective of this study is to evaluate and quantify the future projections of the precipitation extremes by utilizing percentile, absolute and duration precipitation indices. The percentile indices concern: very wet days (the number of days with daily precipitation amount above the 95th percentile from the examined period) and extremely wet days (the number of days with daily precipitation amount above the 99th percentile from the examined period). The absolute threshold indices concern: number of heavy precipitation days (number of days with daily precipitation amount above 10mm), number of very heavy precipitation days (number of days with daily precipitation amount above 20mm) and simple daily intensity index (daily precipitation amount on wet days in a period per number of wet days in the period). The duration indices concern consecutive dry days (the largest number of consecutive days with daily precipitation amount below 1 mm) and consecutive wet days (the largest number of consecutive days with daily precipitation amount above 1 mm). The future projected changes in precipitation extremes are estimated using the output of the simulations of an ensemble of eight regional climate models (RCMs) along with their inter-model standard deviations, which were carried out within the European project CORDEX. The models simulations used as initial and boundary conditions the output data of various General Circulation Models (GCMs) and downscale the climate information in the EUR-11 domain of CORDEX (horizontal resolution 0.11°, i.e. approximately 12km). Each simulation contains results for the 21st century (2010-2100) under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emissions scenarios, as well as the reference period (1981-2010) under historical GHG concentrations. Furthermore, gridded climatic datasets such as E-OBS are used to identify the current climatic conditions of the under study area, as well as to validate the RCM simulations.
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