Assessing Heavy Precipitation Event Response to Global Warming Using the Pseudo-Global Warming Approach: Implications for Future High-Impact Weather Events in Southern Europe
- 1University of Valladolid, Faculty of Computer Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Segovia, Spain (carlos.calvo.sancho@uva.es)
- 2Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (AEMET), Department of Development and Applications, Madrid, Spain.
- 3Department of Earth Physics and Astrophysics, Faculty of Physics, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
- 4Astronomy and Meteorology Institute, Physics Department, University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico.
On September 2-4, 2023, a heavy precipitation event (HPE) affecting numerous places of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands, provoked very high-socioeconomic impacts with several floods, damages to the basic and critical infrastructures and three fatalities in the Iberian central area. Previous to the event, the weather pattern over Europe was governed by two prominent ridges in the North Atlantic basin and the Mediterranean Sea, and a deep trough covering a large part of Western Europe. The combination of a deepening trough and the strengthening of two ridges, extending from the Azores to the British Isles and from Tunisia to the English Channel, induced the formation of a cut-off low over the western part of the Iberian Peninsula. At surface, a low was formed. Such setup in juxtaposition with very high Mediterranean and North Atlantic SSTs promoted vorticity advection and a high amount of moisture in low-levels.
In this study, the response to a warming climate that would affect this HPE at the end of the century is studied by applying the Pseudo-Global Warming Approach (PGWA). The SSP5-8.5 scenario of several climatic models from CMIP6 is used to obtain the climate change increment [FUTURE – PRESENT] needed to apply the PGWA. The increments are computed for all the prognostic variables and added to the IFS analysis to be used as initial/boundary conditions. The WRF-ARW model is used to simulate the event. A control simulation is performed using the IFS analysis as initial conditions without perturbation to compare it with the future-like climate simulation.
The results indicate notable changes in the surface low in a future-like climate, affecting to low-level moisture fluxes. The precipitation distribution is modified, with significant increments in the southern of the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean coast. Although in the future-like climate simulation, the places of the socioeconomic impacts would change, the HPEs maintain very high levels of occurrence.
This study proves the PWGA utility in analyzing high-impact weather events enhancing our comprehension of how these events could change in a warming climate, thereby enhancing current early-warning systems.
How to cite: Calvo-Sancho, C., Montoro-Mendoza, A., González-Alemán, J. J., Díaz-Fernández, J., Bolgiani, P., López-Reyes, M., and Martín, M. L.: Assessing Heavy Precipitation Event Response to Global Warming Using the Pseudo-Global Warming Approach: Implications for Future High-Impact Weather Events in Southern Europe, EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-534, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-534, 2024.
