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Evolution of Mediterranean extreme dry spells during the wet season under climate change

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Abstract

Dry spells are natural hazards which have strong impacts on the environment and on many socioeconomic sectors. Their evolution in the Mediterranean Basin is a major issue because it is one of the most extreme hot spots of climate change world-wide. Very long dry spells are defined as climatic events characterized by their location, spatial extent, duration, and recurrence. This study investigates the evolution of these events during the wet season and for regional future climate projections of the Mediterranean and European Coordinated Downscaling Experiment initiatives (called Med-CORDEX and EURO-CORDEX). All simulations were performed with different regional climate models and various climate change scenarios. Main results are (i) an increase in the number of very long dry spells (between + 3 and + 31 events) and (ii) an increase of their mean duration and spatial extent. This increase in the severity of very long dry spells may have strong socioeconomic impacts in particular for the most vulnerable areas.

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Acknowledgments

This work is a contribution to the HYdrological cycle in The Mediterranean EXperiment (HyMeX) program (especially to the HyMeX drought team), through INSU/MISTRALS support, the Mediterranean region COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (Med-CORDEX) program and the European region COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (Euro-CORDEX). The authors are grateful to Marc Stéfanon for providing his heatwave identification processing software, which has been adapted to the context of droughts. The authors acknowledge the HyMeX database teams (ESPRI/IPSL and SEDOO/Observatoire Midi-Pyrns), the Med-CORDEX database team at ENEA, and the Euro-CORDEX database teams for their help in accessing the data. It is also a contribution to the HyMeX regional hydroclimate project of the GEWEX program of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) (GEWEX Hydroclimate Panel).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre de Recherches de Climatologie, Biogéosciences, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Dijon, France

    Florian Raymond, Albin Ullmann & Pierre Camberlin

  2. IRD - HydroSciences Montpellier, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France

    Yves Tramblay

  3. LMD/IPSL, École Polytechnique, Université Paris Saclay, ENS, PSL Research University, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Palaiseau, France

    Philippe Drobinski

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  1. Florian Raymond
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Raymond, F., Ullmann, A., Tramblay, Y. et al. Evolution of Mediterranean extreme dry spells during the wet season under climate change. Reg Environ Change 19, 2339–2351 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01526-3

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