Preliminary study of Compound Events in Greece using high-resolution downscaled climate data

Climate change is set to result in an increase of extreme weather events such as extreme precipitation, heatwaves, floods, droughts etc. The study of the possibility of the increase of such events is of high importance, but equally important is to study the combination of these events, meaning the study of Compound Events. In our case we focus on the combination of extreme precipitation with extreme wind speed for the region of Greece.

Greece located in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea is prone to Climate Change as the whole region of the Mediterranean Basin. So, it is crucial to understand how the country is affected by Compound Events of extreme precipitation and extreme wind speed. As a first step, we study the historic period 1980-2009 using the model output data. The data for the historic period analysis have been produced from Weather Research Forecast (WRF) 5km downscaled model output with temporal resolution of 6 hours, using as input ERAINTERIM data. The downscaling study that has produced the atmospheric model dataset is described in Politi, et al. (2018). The methodology for studying Compound Events in the area is presented together with the preliminary results.