Future droughts in northern Italy: high-resolution projections using EURO-CORDEX and MED-CORDEX ensembles

Alice Baronetti (), Vincent Dubreuil, Antonello Provenzale and Simona Fratianni
Additional contact information
Alice Baronetti: University of Turin
Vincent Dubreuil: Université Rennes 2, UMR 6554, CNRS, LETG
Antonello Provenzale: National Research Council
Simona Fratianni: University of Turin

Climatic Change, 2022, vol. 172, issue 3, No 1, 22 pages

Abstract: Abstract We analyse the expected characteristics of drought events in northern Italy for baseline (1971–2000), near (2021–2050), and far (2071–2100) future conditions, estimating the drought spatial extent and duration, the percentage of affected area, and the frequency of drought episodes. To this end, daily ensembles of precipitation and temperature records from Global Climate Models (GCMs) and Regional Climate Models (RCMs) pairs, extracted from EURO-CORDEX and MED-CORDEX for the RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios, are collected at spatial resolution of 0.11 degrees. Before the analysis, model outputs are validated on daily weather station time series, and scaling factors for possible use in bias correction are identified. Annual temperature and precipitation anomalies for near and far future conditions are investigated; drought events are identified by the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index and standardized precipitation index at the 12-, 24-, and 36-month timescales. This study highlights the importance of using multiple drought indicators in the detection of drought events, since the comparison reveals that evapotranspiration anomaly is the main triggering factor. For both scenarios, the results indicate an intensification of droughts in northern Italy for the period 2071–2100, with the Alpine chain being especially affected by an increase of drought severity. A North-to-South spatial gradient of drought duration is also observed.

Keywords: CORDEX project; Future projections; Drought; Anomalies; Bias correction; Drought indices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-022-03370-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:172:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-022-03370-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-022-03370-7

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().