A simple scaling procedure to assess the impact of climate change on extreme precipitation

Abstract

In this study we used the products of the Regional Climate Models (RCMs) to evaluate the impact of climate alterations on extreme events across the Region of Sicily (Italy). Data have been retrieved from EURO-CORDEX simulations at 12 km of spatial resolution. Because of the low resolution, the RCMs products are likely unsuitable to reproduce consistently sub-daily heavy precipitations. For this reason, extreme events at daily scale were first checked out by comparing the quantiles estimated from raingauge observations and RCMs outputs. Secondly, we implemented a temporal downscaling approach to estimate rainfall for durations of 1, 3, 6, 12, 24 hours from the modeled daily precipitation. Lastly, future projections were analyzed at daily and sub-daily scale. Results indicated that estimated variations are not homogeneous within the study area, with a general increase of extreme events proportional to the return period and inversely proportional to the duration.