EGU21-2119, updated on 28 Apr 2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2119
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Analysis of EURO-CORDEX sub-daily rainfall simulations and derived event characteristics

Paola Nanni, David J. Peres, Rosaria E. Musumeci, and Antonino Cancelliere
Paola Nanni et al.
  • Università degli studi di Catania, DICAR, Italy (paola.nanni@unict.it)

Climate change is a phenomenon that is claimed to be responsible for a significant alteration of the precipitation regime in different regions worldwide and for the induced potential changes on related hydrological hazards. In particular, some consensus has raised about the fact that climate changes can induce a shift to shorter but more intense rainfall events, causing an intensification of urban and flash flooding hazards.  Regional climate models (RCMs) are a useful tool for trying to predict the impacts of climate change on hydrological events, although their application may lead to significant differences when different models are adopted. For this reason, it is of key importance to ascertain the quality of regional climate models (RCMs), especially with reference to their ability to reproduce the main climatological regimes with respect to an historical period. To this end, several studies have focused on the analysis of annual or monthly data, while few studies do exist that analyze the sub-daily data that are made available by the regional climate projection initiatives. In this study, with reference to specific locations in eastern Sicily (Italy), we first evaluate historical simulations of precipitation data from selected RCMs belonging to the Euro-CORDEX (Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment for the Euro-Mediterranean area) with high temporal resolution (three-hourly), in order to understand how they compare to fine-resolution observations. In particular, we investigate the ability to reproduce rainfall event characteristics, as well as annual maxima precipitation at different durations. With reference to rainfall event characteristics, we specifically focus on duration, intensity, and inter-arrival time between events. Annual maxima are analyzed at sub-daily durations. We then analyze the future simulations according to different Representative concentration scenarios. The proposed analysis highlights the differences between the different RCMs, supporting the selection of the most suitable climate model for assessing the impacts in the considered locations, and to understand what trends for intense precipitation are to be expected in the future.

How to cite: Nanni, P., Peres, D. J., Musumeci, R. E., and Cancelliere, A.: Analysis of EURO-CORDEX sub-daily rainfall simulations and derived event characteristics, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2119, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2119, 2021.

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