Less intense mean daily precipitation, more intense and localised extreme events. This is what the future climate scenarios indicate for the Eastern Alps, according to the study “Evaluation and Expected Changes of Summer Precipitation at Convection Permitting Scale with COSMO-CLM over Alpine Space“, published by the CMCC Foundation in the journal Atmosphere.
Less intense mean daily precipitation, more intense and localised extreme events. This is what the future climate scenarios indicate for the Eastern Alps, according to the study “Evaluation and Expected Changes of Summer Precipitation at Convection Permitting Scale with COSMO-CLM over Alpine Space“, published by the CMCC Foundation in the journal Atmosphere. The research is conducted in the context of the European project H2020 EUCP (European Climate Prediction system) and contributes to the work of the international scientific community for the development of climate models that can support decision makers in a proper assessment of extreme events and their evolution considering climate change, with the ultimate goal of limiting its negative impacts on societies and economies.
Climate change adaptation plans and measures existing worldwide are based on future scenarios made available to decision-makers by the world of research. These scenarios currently provide a good representation of extreme events at daily scale, but still have limited predictive capabilities at sub-daily time scale. For some sectors, such as infrastructure, there is insufficient with which to develop adequate climate change adaptation policies: very intense and rapid rainfall, concentrated in small areas and in a few hours, can have strong impacts on infrastructure, causing the overflow of water bodies and flooding, undermining systems and revealing the inability of sewerage to handle large flows of water. Some extreme events can last for a few hours and affect very small areas (in the order of a few kilometres). The need to understand such phenomena is even greater in some specific geographical contexts, such as the Alpine area, where extreme rainfall events – typical of the summer season – can have serious consequences.
Read more at: CMCC Foundation - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change
Photo Credit: Simon via Pixabay
