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Temporal trends in extreme rainfall intensity and erosivity in the Mediterranean region: a case study in southern Tuscany, Italy

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Abstract

Worldwide climate is likely to become more variable or extreme with increases in intense precipitation. In Mediterranean areas, climate change will increase the risks of droughts, flash floods and soil erosion. Despite rainfall intensity being a key factor in erosive processes, in these areas information on extreme rainfall intensity and the associated erosivity, based on high-temporal resolution data, is either non homogeneous or scarce. These parameters thus need to be assessed in order to highlight suitable adaptation strategies. In this paper, an hourly rainfall intensity (RI) data series is analyzed together with the corresponding 1-min rainfall intensity maximum (RIm) of 23 rainfall gauges located in Tuscany, Italy, in an area highly vulnerable to erosion. The aim is to look for temporal trends (1989–2010) in extreme rainfall intensity and erosivity. Fixed effect logistic regression shows statistically significant temporal increases in the number of RI and RIm exceedances over the 95th percentile threshold. Winter is shown to be the season with the strongest increasing trend in coastal and inland rainfall gauge groups, followed by spring for the coastal group and autumn for the inland group. Linear regressions show that in the inland group there is a temporal increase in rainfall erosivity and on a seasonal basis, the highest increase is observed in autumn. By contrast, for the coastal group this increasing trend is only detectable for spring and winter. Such an increase in rainfall erosivity and its potential continuation could have a strong adverse effect on Mediterranean land conservation.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. Chiara Vallebona’s contribution: work design, data collection and management, analysis of the data through logistic and linear regressions, interpretation of results, manuscript writing and proof reading. Elisa Pellegrino’s contribution: analysis of the data through RDA, CAP and PERMANOVAs, interpretation of results, manuscript writing and proof reading. This work is part of Chiara Vallebona’s PhD thesis project, which was funded by the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. We are grateful to the regional administration of Tuscany for access to the rainfall gauges records. Special thanks go to Mariassunta Galli for providing her valuable advices, and to Valerio Capecchi for helpful discussions.

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  1. Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Institute of Life Sciences, P.za Martiri della Libertà 33, 56127, Pisa, Italy

    Chiara Vallebona, Elisa Pellegrino & Enrico Bonari

  2. Unit of Biostatistics, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Paolo Frumento

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  1. Chiara Vallebona
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  2. Elisa Pellegrino
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  4. Enrico Bonari
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Correspondence to Chiara Vallebona.

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Chiara Vallebona and Elisa Pellegrino contributed equally to this work.

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Vallebona, C., Pellegrino, E., Frumento, P. et al. Temporal trends in extreme rainfall intensity and erosivity in the Mediterranean region: a case study in southern Tuscany, Italy. Climatic Change 128, 139–151 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1287-9

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