Changes in meteo-hydrological extremes in Spain at different levels of global warming

Abstract

This work assesses changes in the extremes of precipitation and streamflow in Spain assuming global warming scenarios of 1.5, 2, and 3 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. We consider an ensemble of seven regional climate model simulations spanning the period 1970-2099 to evaluate precipitation changes and to drive a distributed hydrological model and thus to derive streamflow statistics under present and future climates. The climate simulations were performed under the umbrella of the EURO-CORDEX project, thus covering Europe with a spatial resolution of 0.11 degree both in latitude and longitude, the finest so far in this type of climatological multimodel and multi-scenario experiments. Preliminary results suggest that constraining global warming well below 2°C, as sought in the Paris Agreement, reduces the probability of increasing drought related indices.