TY  - JOUR
A1  - Drobinski, Philippe
A1  - Silva, Nicolas Da
A1  - Panthou, Gérémy
A1  - Bastin, Sophie
A1  - Muller, Caroline
A1  - Ahrens, Bodo
A1  - Borga, Marco
A1  - Conte, Dario
A1  - Fosser, Giorgia
A1  - Giorgi, Filippo
A1  - Güttler, Ivan
A1  - Kotroni, Vassiliki
A1  - Li, Laurent
A1  - Morin, Efrat
A1  - Önol, Bariş
A1  - Quintana‑Segui, Pere
A1  - Romera, Raquel
A1  - Torma, Csaba Zsolt
T1  - Scaling precipitation extremes with temperature in the Mediterranean : past climate assessment and projection in anthropogenic scenarios
T2  - Climate dynamics
N2  - In this study we investigate the scaling of precipitation extremes with temperature in the Mediterranean region by assessing against observations the present day and future regional climate simulations performed in the frame of the HyMeX and MED-CORDEX programs. Over the 1979–2008 period, despite differences in quantitative precipitation simulation across the various models, the change in precipitation extremes with respect to temperature is robust and consistent. The spatial variability of the temperature–precipitation extremes relationship displays a hook shape across the Mediterranean, with negative slope at high temperatures and a slope following Clausius–Clapeyron (CC)-scaling at low temperatures. The temperature at which the slope of the temperature–precipitation extreme relation sharply changes (or temperature break), ranges from about 20 °C in the western Mediterranean to <10 °C in Greece. In addition, this slope is always negative in the arid regions of the Mediterranean. The scaling of the simulated precipitation extremes is insensitive to ocean–atmosphere coupling, while it depends very weakly on the resolution at high temperatures for short precipitation accumulation times. In future climate scenario simulations covering the 2070–2100 period, the temperature break shifts to higher temperatures by a value which is on average the mean regional temperature change due to global warming. The slope of the simulated future temperature–precipitation extremes relationship is close to CC-scaling at temperatures below the temperature break, while at high temperatures, the negative slope is close, but somewhat flatter or steeper, than in the current climate depending on the model. Overall, models predict more intense precipitation extremes in the future. Adjusting the temperature–precipitation extremes relationship in the present climate using the CC law and the temperature shift in the future allows the recovery of the temperature–precipitation extremes relationship in the future climate. This implies negligible regional changes of relative humidity in the future despite the large warming and drying over the Mediterranean. This suggests that the Mediterranean Sea is the primary source of moisture which counteracts the drying and warming impacts on relative humidity in parts of the Mediterranean region.
KW  - Precipitation extremes
KW  - Clausius–Clapeyron scaling
KW  - Regional climate
KW  - Europe
KW  - Mediterranean
KW  - HyMeX
KW  - MED-CORDEX
Y1  - 2016
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/42282
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-422827
SN  - 0930-7575
SN  - 1432-0894
N1  - © The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com. Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
VL  - 2016
SP  - 1
EP  - 21
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin ; Heidelberg
ER  -