Abstract
The atmospheric circulation can be recognized as one of the causes of severe rainfall events occurrence. Such events, especially when are characterized by short durations and high intensities, result in flood events in the Mediterranean area. It is very important to understand how these heavy rainfall events, which can be usually identified with convective rainfall, are related to the different types of atmospheric circulation. In order to do this, some weather circulation patterns (WPs), which have been derived for the Europe, have been first connected with the rainfall annual maxima (AMAX) recorded over the Sicily. The analyses allowed to identify those WPs that are more likely to result into the occurrence of the AMAX. Secondly, two ERA-Interim reanalysis indexes have been used to define a criterion to distinguish those AMAX mainly due to a convective component from those more related to a stratiform precipitation, also detecting a transient zone between these two types of events. Finally, the main results have been connected together with the aim to define a set of triggering factors of extreme rainfall events.
Highlights
Since the impacts of climate change on the environment have been constantly rising over the last decades, scientists have paid much attention to understand the effects of this phenomenonElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.(Kunkel et al 1999)
Even if in WP8,3 and WP8,6 it is possible to observe an increasing pattern of the differences with the duration, the negligible differences shown in Fig. 2c lead to conclude that the two samples of annual maxima (AMAX) are characterized by the same behavior under all the WP8,x
This result is confirmed by the Bayesian approach, which recognizes WP8,1 as the one that leads to the occurrence of most of the AMAX for the different durations
Summary
Since the impacts of climate change on the environment have been constantly rising over the last decades, scientists have paid much attention to understand the effects of this phenomenon. When heavy rainfall events present high intensity and short duration they can be often associated with convective events Due to their characteristics, especially when they hit small catchments with low times of concentration, they can result in flash floods (Forestieri et al 2016; Noto and La Loggia 2009) and cause economic damages and, more relevantly, human lives losses. A novel criterion, based on a fuzzy approach, valid for different geographical areas of Sicily, is here presented to distinguish convective from stratiform and mixed\unresolved rainfall AMAX and connect them to their seasonality This criterion could be, if well calibrated, extended to other regions of the globe and used as a tool to predict potentially heavy rainfall events
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