Increasing daily precipitation extremes despite declining annual totals in southern Europe: a modeling study on the effects of Mediterranean Sea warming

Senatore, Alfonso; Furnari, Luca; Nikravesh, Gholamreza; Castagna, Jessica; Mendicino, Giuseppe

doi:10.5194/hess-30-2913-2026

Articles | Volume 30, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-2913-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-2913-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 30, issue 10

Research article

|

18 May 2026

Research article |

| 18 May 2026

Increasing daily precipitation extremes despite declining annual totals in southern Europe: a modeling study on the effects of Mediterranean Sea warming

Alfonso Senatore, Luca Furnari, Gholamreza Nikravesh, Jessica Castagna, and Giuseppe Mendicino

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-2913-2026-supplement

Data sets

Daily precipitation (mm) simulated with WRF on the D02 domain by varying the SST scenarios Alfonso Senatore et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16356046

ERA5-Land hourly data from 1950 to present Copernicus Climate Change Service https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.e2161bac

ERA5 monthly averaged data on single levels from 1940 to present Copernicus Climate Change Service https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.f17050d7

IPCC-WGI AR6 Interactive Atlas Dataset: CMIP6 C.-U.-I. Cantabria https://doi.org/10.20350/DIGITALCSIC/15492

ESA SST CCI and C3S reprocessed sea surface temperature analyses E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information (CMEMS) https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00169

Short summary

Observations and reanalyses show widespread declines in annual precipitation but increases in one-day maxima in Southern Europe. Very high-resolution simulations over a representative Mediterranean sub-region isolate sea surface temperature effects: with all else unchanged, projected warmer seas mainly raise the frequency of heavy rainfall over land by intensifying previously moderate events. For the most extreme cases, mean overland totals change little because peak rainfall remains offshore.