High-Resolution Simulations of Recent Past Extreme Precipitation Events Over Cyprus

Abstract

Besides global warming, climate change is expected to influence precipitation amounts and distribution. While global climate projections typically address the long-term, and weather forecasts the short to medium range up to weeks, decision-makers and stakeholders also need guidance on inter-annual to decadal time scales. In this context, the BINGO H2020 project aims both at reducing the uncertainty of near-term climate predictions and developing response strategies. One of the main objectives is to provide decadal predictions with a specific focus on extreme events. The projected precipitation distribution will eventually drive hydrological impact models. In this study we present the dynamical downscaling of the ERA-Interim (EI) dataset for validation purposes. Extreme rainfall periods were identified and simulated in very high horizontal resolution (up to 4 km) using the WRF model. In a later stage, future periods of extreme precipitation or droughts will be identified from the output of the MiKlip decadal prediction system and will be downscaled in order to assess the climate change impact on water resources in Cyprus. Our simulations seem to capture reasonably well rainfall during an extreme event (November 2014) over the eastern Mediterranean. It is also found to improve the EI precipitation that was found to be underestimated.