| ABSTRACT | The Mediterranean region is considered as a hotspot due to its vulnerability to changes in the climate system. In this framework and under a climate change perspective, it is expected that the Iberian Peninsula (IP), as part of the Mediterranean region, will undergo important impacts on ecosystems and ultimately on humans due to the rising temperature.
This study is focused on examining changes in extreme temperatures (maximum and minimum temperature) by using high-resolution climate projections. To do this, current (1980-2014) and future (2021-2050 and 2071-2100) climate simulations were carried out using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model over a domain centered in the IP with 0.088 degrees of spatial resolution (c.10 km) and nested in the 0.44 EURO-CORDEX region. The WRF model was driven by the bias-corrected outputs of two different global climate models, the version 1 of NCAR’s Community Earth System Model (CESM1) and the Max Planck Institute’s Earth System Model (MPI-ESM-LR). Additionally, in order to take into account the effects of the greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, two different representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios were used: the moderate emission scenario (RCP4.5) and the most severe emission scenario (RCP8.5).
Future changes in temperature were examined by directly comparing grid-points between future and present through the Delta-change approach, and at different time scales. That is, the annual and seasonal scales were used to evaluate changes in long-term mean values and daily values were analyzed to elucidate changes in term of extreme temperatures. Our results suggested a substantial rise in both the long-term mean and extreme temperatures over the IP. The results also showed that changes are especially noteworthy in warm seasons and over the southern half of the IP.
Key Words: WRF, Regional Climate Models, Climate change, Iberian Peninsula, high-resolution projections.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This work has been financed by the projects, CGL2013-48539-R (MINECO-Spain, FEDER) and CGL2017-89836-R (MINECO-Spain, FEDER). |