Abstract
Water scarcity is becoming a serious threat, which may have negative environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Increases in the projected global temperature and changes in regional distribution and intensity of precipitation may alter the frequency, severity and duration of droughts. In this study, we use the Standardized Precipitation Index to identify drought events in the present and future climate. The index is initially calculated using data from meteorological stations of the Hellenic observational network, and subsequently using output from three regional climate models. The period of 1971–2000 is chosen as present climate and the future climate conditions are studied using the model timeseries up to 2100. The present-period was divided into two sub-periods and significant drought events were identified over the recent period of 1989–2000. Overall, we found that intense droughts occurred in continental Greece, whereas the islands, including Crete, experienced milder drought episodes. The years 1989 and 2000 were the driest on record for Greece, resulting in serious consequences for both urban and rural areas. The 21st Century projections did not suggest radical changes in the region’s rainfall patterns, although potentially intense drought events are expected to increase in the western parts of the country.
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Kostopoulou, E., Giannakopoulos, C., Krapsiti, D., Karali, A. (2017). Temporal and Spatial Trends of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) in Greece Using Observations and Output from Regional Climate Models. In: Karacostas, T., Bais, A., Nastos, P. (eds) Perspectives on Atmospheric Sciences. Springer Atmospheric Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-35095-0_68
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-35095-0_68
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