L'article du mois (juin 2019)

Evolution of Mediterranean extreme dry spells during the wetseason under climate change

Florian Raymond, Albin Ullmann, Yves Tramblay, Philippe Drobinski, Pierre Camberlin. Regional Environmental Change, published online: 18 july 2019

Dry spells are natural hazards which have strong impacts on the environment and on many socioeconomic sectors. Theirevolution in the Mediterranean Basin is a major issue because it is one of the most extreme hot spots of climate changeworld-wide. Very long dry spells are defined as climatic events characterized by their location, spatial extent, duration,and recurrence. This study investigates the evolution of these events during the wet season and for regional future climateprojections of the Mediterranean and European Coordinated Downscaling

Experiment initiatives (called Med-CORDEXand EURO-CORDEX). All simulations were performed with different regional climate models and various climate changescenarios. Main results are (i) an increase in the number of very long dry spells (between + 3 and + 31 events) and (ii) anincrease of their mean duration and spatial extent. This increase in the severity of very long dry spells may have strongsocioeconomic impacts in particular for the most vulnerable areas.