Climate change projections for Greece in the 21st century

Here, we present an updated assessment of projected climate change over Greece in the near future and at the end of the 21^st century. The analysis is based on an ensemble of 11 high-resolution EURO-CORDEX simulations based on historical emission data and three different greenhouse gas concentration scenarios, namely, RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5. Our results strongly point towards a warmer future under all the examined RCPs. Under the extreme RCP8.5 scenario, temperature is expected to increase on average by 1.6 ^oC (12%) in the near future and 4.3 ^oC (33%) at the end of the century. The number of hot days and tropical nights per year is expected to increase significantly and the number of frost days to decrease. Also, the future will be possibly drier, with statistically robust results for the end-of-the-century period under RCP8.5 only. On average, precipitation is  expected to decrease under RCP8.5 by -0.4 mm day^-1 (-16%) and the number of consecutive dry days per year to increase by 15.4 days (30%) at the end of the century.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Action titled "National Νetwork on Climate Change and its Impacts - CLIMPACT" which is implemented under the sub-project 3 of the project "Infrastructure of national research networks in the fields of Precision Medicine, Quantum Technology and Climate Change", funded by the Public Investment Program of Greece, General Secretary of Research and Technology/Ministry of Development and Investments.