Influence of climate change on IDF curves for Barcelona

What is it about?

The potential changes in the intensity–duration–frequency relationship in Barcelona due to climate change have been investigated. For the last third of the 21st century, under the A1B, A2 and B2 IPCC climate scenarios, an increase of at least 4% has been found on the expected daily rainfall with return period longer than 20 years. Using a temporal downscaling based on scaling properties of rainfall, future hourly extreme rainfall has been estimated. For almost all the scenarios and periods considered, the increase on the expected hourly rainfall has resulted slightly higher than the corresponding daily rainfall. The greatest differences between the future hourly and daily rainfall estimated have been found in the second third of the century under scenarios A1B (8%) and A2 (9%).

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Photo by Wenniel Lun on Unsplash

Photo by Wenniel Lun on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The evaluation of the possible climate change influence on extreme precipitation is very interesting in the Mediterranean area due to the usual and characteristic high intensities of its rainfall pattern. This analysis is also very important in urban zones, especially those densely populated with complex sewer systems, generally vulnerable to torrential rainfall. The study found this important result: ☆ The increase of rainfall due to climate change expected for the 21st century in the western Mediterranean area is higher for shorter durations (hourly vs. daily), which means a higher increase in torrential rainfall than in the rest.