Study of Precipitation Extremes in Cyprus

Abstract

The influence of climate change on the precipitation extremes is examined using results from theory, modeling and observations. Observations and simulations with climate models show that a warming climate typically results in an intensification of precipitation extremes. Towards this direction, an analysis of the daily precipitation database for the island of Cyprus is performed, for a period of 50 years. A number of climatic indices for precipitation are calculated using the dense network of rain gauges of the Cyprus Department of Meteorology. These parameters are calculated for the recent period spanning from 1981 to 2010. The results are compared with those of a previous period, namely the period 1961--1990, in order to investigate the changes regarding the occurrence of extreme rainfall events, along with the differences in the recording of periods with drought, showing a decrease in the number of rainy days along with the number of days with heavy rainfall.