Geofizika, Vol. 31 No. 2, 2014.
Original scientific paper
Recent precipitation trends and future scenarios over the Mediterranean Sea
Mohamed Shaltout
; University of Alexandria, Faculty of Science, Department of Oceanography, Alexandria, Egypt
Anders Omstedt
; University of Gothenburg, Department of Earth Sciences, Gothenburg, Sweden
Abstract
This paper analyses current precipitation rates (PRs) and trends over the Mediterranean Sea region and their response to global climate change scenar- ios. The analysis uses 0.25° gridded PRs dataset over a 13-year period (1998–2010) based on remote sensing data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mis- sion. Future scenarios use the results of six global climate models (GCMs) under four representative concentration pathway scenarios (i.e., RCP26, RCP45, RCP60, and RCP85).
Results indicate that the Mediterranean Sea region displays a seasonally significant (insignificant) wetter trend during cold (hot) seasons, and exhibits annual spatial variation ranging from under 15 to over 100 mm month –1 over the period 1998–2010. Sea level pressure has two different effects on precipita- tion over the northern (inversely related to precipitation) versus southern (di- rectly related to precipitation) Mediterranean Sea. However, sea surface tem- perature is anti-correlated with precipitation. The GCMs that describe the current Mediterranean Sea precipitation most realistically are GFDL-CM3-1, MIROC-ESM-CHEM, and HadGEM2-AO, which are used to calculate the en- semble mean for each representative concentration pathway scenario. The en- semble means realizations indicate that the study area will experience substan- tial drought in the 21st century. Uncertainty in the projected precipitation over the Mediterranean Sea was partitioned into four sources, of which the used scenario dominates.
Keywords
Mediterranean Sea; Black Sea; precipitation; climate models
Hrčak ID:
134937
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2014.
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