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Lukáš Dolák Masaryk University Email: dolak@sci.muni.cz Phone: +420 549 494 378

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Since the 1990´s a slight increase of annual precipitation in the Czech Republic has been recorded (Střeštík et al. 2014). It is very likely that maximum precipitation values are increased in the future due to a higher amount of atmospheric moisture (Kunkel et al. 2013). This paper deals with comparison between measured three-day precipitation totals on the area of the Czech Republic in the period 1981–2010 and three-day rainfall calculated on the basis of five representative regional climate models (hereafter RCMs) for various recurrence interval (N-year return period) and emission scenarios (RCPs) in the 2010–2100 period. Special attention was paid to the summer season (JJA) in which the highest precipitation totals occurred in mid-latitudes of the central European climate.

1 Introduction

3.1 Characteristics of maximal three-day precipitation totals during the periods (1981–2010) and (2010–2100)

Based on measured three-day precipitation totals in the Czech Republic during the period 1981–2010 (Fig. 1), it is evident that the precipitation totals increase together with increasing return periods. The highest precipitation was recorded in the border mountain areas and the lowest precipitation totals occurred in the area of southeastern and central part of the Czech Republic. In the case of the maximal three-day precipitation totals which are compared with the calculated rainfall the peaks of measured precipitation, reached totals measuring 166 mm (N5) to 305 mm (N100).

3 Results

Fig. 3 Maximal three-day precipitation totals (mm) averaged on the basis of results of five RCMs for 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100-year return periods for RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 in the 2021–2040, 2041–2060 and 2081–2100 periods in the Czech Republic

Fig. 2 Maximal three-day precipitation totals (mm) according to five RCMs for 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100-year return periods for RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 in the 2010–2100 period in the Czech Republic

Bíl M, Andrášik R, Zahradníček P, Kubeček J, Sedoník J, Štěpánek P. 2016. Total water content thresholds for shallow landslides, Outer Western Carpathians. Landslides 13(2): 337–347.

Coles SG. 2001. An introduction to statistical modeling of extreme values. London: Springer-Verlag.

Frei C, Christensen JH, Deque M, Jacob D, Jones RG, Vidale PL. 2003. Daily precipitation statistics in regional climate models: Evaluation and intercomparison for the European Alps. Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres 108(D3): 1–19.

Giorgi F, Jones C, Asrar G. 2009. Addressing climate information needs at the regional level: The CORDEX framework. WMO Bulletin 58(3): 175–183.

Giorgi F, Mearns LO. 1999. Introduction to special section: Regional climate modeling revisited. Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres 104(D6): 6335–6352.

Christensen JH, Christensen OB. 2007. A summary of the PRUDENCE model projections of changes in European climate by the end of this century. Climatic Change 81(7): 7–30.

Kunkel KE, Karl TR, Easterling DR, Redmond K, Young J, Yin XG, Hennon P. 2013. Probable maximum precipitation and climate change. Geophysical Research Letters 40(7): 1402–1408.

Mearns LO, Arritt R, Biner S, Bukovsky MS, Mcginnis S, Sain S, Caya D, Correia J, Flory D, Gutowski W, Takle ES, Jones R, Leung R, Moufouma-Okia W, Mcdaniel L, Nunes AMB, Qian Y, Roads J, Sloan L, Snyder M. 2012. The North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program. Overview of Phase I results. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 93(9): 1337–1362.

References

This research was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the CR within the National Sustainability Program I (NPU I), grant no. LO1415.

Acknowledgements

2 Data and methods Within the Czech Adapt project (http://www.klimatickazmena.cz/cs/) five RCMs were chosen. Selected RCMs were as follows CNRM_ALADIN, ECEARTH, EC-EARTH_RACMO, MOHC_HADGEM and MPI-ESM-LR. These RCM simulations were prepared within the European part of the global Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (Euro-CORDEX, www.euro-cordex.net). The global circulation models’ output from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) have been utilised as the source of driving data for the RCMs. Model experiments were performed in spatial resolution 0.11°. Every model was calculated for two emission scenarios 4.5 and 8.5 (Representative Concentration Pathways - RCP) used in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Moreover, the outputs of models were calculated for five various recurrence intervals (N=5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 years).

3.2 Comparison of selected 20-year periods

In the next step, all the regional climate models are merged and the 2010–2100 period is divided into three partial periods (2021–2040, 2041–2060 and 2081–2100, Fig. 3) which are then compared with one another (Fig. 4).

Fig. 1 Maximal measured three-day precipitation totals (mm) in the 1981–2010 period for 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100-year return period in the Czech Republic

5 Conclusions In comparison with the 1981–2010 period, the maximal three-day precipitation totals during the 2010–2100 period are expected to be higher. The highest precipitation rate is predicted by MOHC_HADGEM which estimates an average increase in rainfall for RCPs 4.5 and 8.5, approximately 14% and 28%, respectively. On the contrary, MPI-ESM-LR calculates the lowest increase in rainfall which amounts to 6.3% (RCP 4.5) and 5.6% (RCP 8.5). The division of the 2010–2100 period into to three individual periods brings a more detailed view of the temporal distribution of precipitation. The highest maximal three-day precipitation totals are recorded for the summer season representing more than one third of the annual rainfall. A higher degree of water saturation in the soil may result in subsequent flash floods, increasing soil erosion or more frequent occurrences of shallow landslides, especially in the Outer Western Carpathians (Bíl et al. 2016).

Fig. 5 Precipitation anomalies (%) between the measured maximal three-day precipitation totals in the 1981–2010 period and modelled maximal three-day precipitation totals in the 2021–2040, 2041–2060 and 2081–2100 periods for 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100-year return period and RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 in the Czech Republic

The maximal three-day precipitation totals are compared between the measured and modelled periods. The maximal three-day precipitation rate during the period 1981–2010 fluctuated between 166 mm and 305 mm (5–100-year return period). As regards RCP 4.5, the highest maximal precipitation totals during the period 2010–2100 are predicted for 5 and 10-year return periods by EC-EARTH and for 20, 50 and 100-year return periods by MPI-ESM-LR. On the other hand, the highest maximum precipitation totals for RCP 8.5 and all analysed recurrence intervals (5–100-year return periods) is solely held by CNRM_ALADIN. The highest increase of precipitation was recorded for the 5 and 50-year return periods and the least increase of precipitation was observed for the 100-year return period in both scenarios congruently.

Lukáš Dolák1,2, Ladislava Řezníčková1,2, Petr Dobrovolný1,2, Petr Štěpánek2 and Pavel Zahradníček2

1 Masaryk University, Department of Geography, Brno, Czech Republic 2 Global Change Research Institute CAS, Brno, Czech Republic

The RCMs simulations database analysed in this paper were comprised from the annual maxima of three-day precipitation totals measured at 268 meteorological stations on the territory of the Czech Republic during the period 1981–2010. These data were submitted to quality control, homogenised and the missing values were subsequently completed using the spatial interpolation method. From the statistical theory it follows that the Generalized Extreme Values (GEV) distribution is an appropriate theoretical model for return period estimates (Coles 2001). According to the shape parameter, three theoretical distributions are included in GEV (Gumbel distribution, Fréchet distribution and Weibull distribution). Appropriate theoretical models for return periods’ estimation were tested for maximum daily precipitation totals, measured at several Czech meteorological stations. It was concluded that the Gumbel distribution best approximates the empirical data especially for N > 50 while estimates according to Fréchet and Weibull provide very unstable results.

The precipitation anomalies between the measured precipitation totals in the 1981–2010 period and the modelled precipitation totals in three partial periods are calculated and altered according to the individual return period and applied emission scenario (Fig. 5). The highest anomalies are recorded for the 5-year return period reaching on average 10.5% in the case of RCP 4.5 and 16.3% in the case of RCP 8.5. The least number of differences between periods under consideration with respect to RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 are provable for a 100-year return period reaching 12.0% and 18.1%, respectively.

The models predict that the highest maximal precipitation totals for N100 for the 2021–2040 period and RCP 4.5 is (311 mm) and the lowest maximal precipitation rate for N5 for the 2041–2060 period and RCP 4.5 is (170 mm). Generally, RCPs 4.5 are considered to be the scenarios expecting lower precipitation totals than RCPs 8.5 which predominate in three out of four scenarios with the highest rainfalls. The same results are also presented by Štěpánek et al. (2016).

3.3 Characteristics of maximal three-day summer precipitation totals in the selected 20-year periods

The highest proportion of precipitation during the 20-year periods fell during the summer season (JJA) both in the case of RCPs 4.5 and 8.5. Except during the period 2081–2100 and RCP 8.5, the maximal three-day summer precipitation totals represent more than one third of the annual precipitation. The rest of the seasons (spring-MAM, autumn-SON and winter-DJF) each comprise circa 20–26% of the annual precipitation rate (Tab. 1).

Tab. 1 Maximal three-day seasonal precipitation totals (%) in the 2021–2040, 2041–2060 and 2081–2100 periods for RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 in the Czech Republic

Tab. 2 Maximal three-day summer precipitation totals (mm) for the 2021–2040, 2041–2060 and 2081–2100 periods for 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100-year return periods and RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 in the Czech Republic

The course of maximal three-day summer precipitation totals during individual 20-year periods is different from the course of maximal three-day annual rainfall (Tab. 2). The most significant decrease in maximal three-day summer precipitation totals is expected to occur during the 2081–2100 period and with RCP 8.5 (30.7%). This is probably caused by an increased proportion of maximal three-day spring precipitation totals. According to RCP 4.5, the higher summer precipitation is predicted to occur in the first and third 20-year period of the 21st century for all analysed return periods in comparison with RCP 8.5.

RCMs (Giorgi and Mearns 1999, Wang et al. 2004) are used for providing regional climate information and may serve as estimates for maximal three-day precipitation totals. Their availability and reliability for Europe have increased in recent years especially thanks to projects like PRUDENCE (Christensen and Christensen 2007), ENSEBLES (van der Linden and Mitchell 2009), NARCCAP (Mearns et al. 2012) or CORDEX (Giorgi et al. 2009). However, model outputs contain systematic errors (Frei et al. 2003, Suklitsch et al. 2011) which have to be corrected in order to provide reliable and credible results that can be used for the study of climate change impacts. Štěpánek et al. (2016) tested the selected RCMs for changes of bias over time and concluded that bias correction was necessary to obtain meaningful results when applied to impact studies, where absolute values played an important role.

4 Discussion

Fig. 4 The box plots of maximal three-day precipitation totals (mm) for the 2021–2040, 2041–2060 and 2081–2100 periods for 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100-year return periods and RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 in the Czech Republic

Střeštík J, Rožnovský J, Štěpánek P, Zahradníček P 2014. The change of annual and seasonal precipitation totals in the Czech Republic during 1961–2012. Mikulov: In: Rožnovský, J., Litschmann, T., Středa, T., Středová, H. (eds): Extrémy oběhu vody v krajině.

Suklitsch M, Gobiet A, Truhetz H, Awan NK, Gottel H, Jacob D. 2011. Error characteristics of high resolution regional climate models over the Alpine area. Climate Dynamics 37(1–2): 377–390.

Štěpánek P, Zahradníček P, Farda A, Skalák P, Trnka M, Meitner J, Rajdl K. 2016. Projection of drought-inducing climate conditions in the Czech Republic according to Euro-CORDEX models. Climate Research, 70(2-3): 179–193.

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Euro-CORDEX. 2014.[Online]. Available at: www.euro-cordex.net

CzechAdapt. 2015. [Online]. Available at: www.klimatickazmena.cz/cs/

Similarly, the marked increase in precipitation together with increasing recurrence intervals during the period 2010–2100 is also visible in the model outputs with regard to used previous scenarios. Nevertheless, the future spatial distribution of precipitation is nearly the same as at present (Fig. 2).

The highest average three-day precipitation totals during the 2010–2100 period are predicted by MOHC_HADGEM. The average increase in precipitation in comparison with the 1981–2010 period for 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100-year return periods amounts to 14.1% in the case of RCP 4.5 and 27.8% for RCP 8.5.

Analogously, the lowest simulated maximal three-day precipitation totals for RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 are compared with measured precipitation totals. CNRM_ALADIN predicts the lowest rainfall in the case of RCP 4.5 and EC-EARTH forcasts the lowest precipitation in the case of RCP 8.5 for all recurrence intervals. Except for 50-year return period using RCP 4.5, an increasing trend in the differences between the measured and modelled periods has been observed. Models calculating the lowest maximal three-day precipitation totals predict lower rainfall with the increasing return period in comparison with measured maximal three-day precipitation totals.

Extreme precipitation totals under present and future climatic conditions according to regional climate models