Long-term changes in extreme temperatures and precipitation in Spain

• The development of the Spanish daily adjusted temperatureseries (SDATS) and the Spanish daily adjusted precipitation series(SDAPS) datasets in the framework of the European Community(EC)-funded project EMULATE (European and North Atlanticdaily to MULtidecadal climATE variability) enabled theassessment of long-term annual changes of extreme temperatureand precipitation indices over peninsular Spain for the period1901–2005. Within this framework, a set of procedureswas developed to generate long-term (1850–2005) daily adjustedtemperature and precipitation series and to use them toassess changes in climatic extremes. The present report describesdetails of the data employed to analyze the behavior ofSpanish climate extremes and discusses the results of investigationsinto the annual changes in selected indices that occurredduring the 20th century: exceedances of upper and lowerpercentiles of daily maximum (Tmax) and minimum (Tmin)temperatures, cold-spell duration index (CSDI), warm-spell durationindex (WSDI), daily rainfall (R) exceeding the 95th and 99thpercentiles, simple daily intensity index (SDII), and greatest 1–and 5-day total precipitation. Upper and lower temperaturepercentiles increased during the 20th century over mainlandSpain, but changes in daytime extreme temperatures werelarger than the changes in night-time extreme temperatures.This pattern, however, shifted slightly in the recent period ofstrong warming, with more similar rates of change among daytimeand night-time extreme temperatures. Changes in extremeprecipitation indices were not as evident as those in extreme-temperature indices, but there was a tendency towardsheavier precipitation.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Klimatforskning (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Climate Research (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Extreme temperature and precipitation change

daily distribution

temperature and precipitation extreme indices

Spain

Climatology

Klimatologi

extremes

temperature

observations

climate

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