| ABSTRACT | According to the IPCC reports (Hartmann et al., 2013) since about 1950 the number of heavy precipitation events over land has increased in many regions and in the future extreme precipitation events will very likely become more intense and more frequent as global mean surface temperature increases. Such changes also apply to the Black Sea region. Daily precipitation data from 42 meteorological stations were used to calculated climate extreme indices in the Black Sea region (the south of Russia) for the 1970–2015 period. Data were taken from the website of the ECA&D. Data quality control and calculation of indices was performed by means of RClimDex software. Ten indices from the list of climate extreme indices recommended by the joint World Meteorological Organization (CCL/CLIVAR/JCOMM) Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) were calculated. The resulting series of climate extreme indices were analyzed through trends. The results show statistically significant increasing trends in indices CDD (Consecutive Dry Days) over the Crimean peninsula and Sea of Azov coast. Decreasing trends of CDD are typical for the territory of the Caspian Depression. Increasing significant trends for CWD (Consecutive Wet Days) index were observed over the Crimean peninsula. Tendency to increase was found for PRCPTOT index, which describes the total annual amount of precipitation on wet days, on the Caspian Sea coast and in the territory of the Caspian Depression. The indices R10 and R20 are based on absolute thresholds (the number of very wet days). The indices show significant decrease in Crimea and significant increase in the territory of the Caspian Depression. Similar results were obtained for indices R95p and R99p (the 95th and 99th percentile of daily total precipitation).The analysis of station trend maps didn’t show clear signal over study region for indices RX1day and RX5day (max 1-day and 5-day precipitation amount). Negative slope are dominate over the Crimean peninsula and positive ones in the territory of the Caspian Depression, but most of them is not significant. SDII (a simple measure of precipitation intensity) show significant decreasing over Crimean peninsula and a pattern of increase for the stations located in the territory of Caspian Depression. Analysis of climate extreme indices showed significant decrease over Crimean peninsula and significant increase in the territory of the Caspian Depression for intensity indices. In other territory mixed spatial patterns of nonsignificant negative and positive trends were found. The reported study was partly funded by RFBR according to the research project N° 18-35-00325. |