Department: Geografia

e-ISSN: 1684-9981

URV's Author/s: D. Efthymiadis; C. M. Goodess; P. D. Jones

Abstract: Two recently-available daily gridded datasets are used to investigate trends in Mediterranean temperature extremes since the mid-20th century. The underlying trends are found to be generally consistent with global trends of temperature and their extremes: cold extremes decrease and warm/hot extremes increase. This consistency is better manifested in the western part of the Mediterranean where changes are most pronounced since the mid-1970s. In the eastern part, a cooling is observed, with a near reversal in the last two decades. This inter-basin discrepancy is clearer in winter, while in summer changes are more uniform and the west-east difference is restricted to the rate of increase of warm/hot extremes, which is higher in central and eastern parts of the Mediterranean over recent decades. Linear regression and correlation analysis reveals some influence of major large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns on the occurrence of these extremes – both in terms of trend and interannual variability. These relationships are not, however, able to account for the most striking features of the observations – in particular the intensification of the increasing trend in warm/hot extremes, which is most evident over the last 15–20 yr in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean.

licence for use: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/

ISSN: 1561-8633

Record's date: 05/02/2021

Last page: 2214

Journal volume: 11

Papper version: info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Link to the original source: https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/11/2199/2011/

Article's DOI: 10.5194/nhess-11-2199-2011

Journal publication year: 2011

First page: 2199