Amplification of the Temperature Seasonality in the Mediterranean Region Under Anthropogenic Climate Change

Abstract

Global and regional climate model simulations show that the Mediterranean region is vulnerable to climate change (Diffenbaugh & Giorgi, 2012;Giorgi & Lionello, 2008). Under the influence of global warming, the Mediterranean region is warming much faster in summer than in winter (Giorgi & Lionello, 2008), which is known as Mediterranean amplification (Brogli et al., 2019). Mediterranean summer warming has exceeded warming in other places worldwide (Qian & Zhang, 2015) and is higher than the average level of warming in the northern hemisphere (Lionello & Scarascia, 2018). The Mediterranean region is characterized by a transitional climate regime in the warm season, where evapotranspiration is limited by soil moisture shortages rather than solar radiation, and the soil water content therefore controls the variability of the boundary layer (Materia et al., 2021). This leads to the strong land-atmosphere coupling that becomes established during the Mediterranean summer (Orth & Seneviratne, 2017). A lack of soil moisture is therefore able to amplify and sustain heat anomalies and extremes in this area (Materia et al., 2021;Miralles et al., 2012).Increased summer warming endangers human health (Scortichini et al., 2018) and greatly increases the probability of wildfires (Turco et al., 2013), such as those that affected Italy and Greece in summer 2021 and western Europe in 2022. The amplified warming of summer temperatures compared to that of the winter temperatures in the Mediterranean region corresponds to an enhancement in the temperature seasonality (T seasonality ) (Lee et al., 2021). The T seasonality , also known as the amplitude of the annual cycle of temperature and often expressed by summer-minus-winter temperature, is an important indicator of climate change (

Detecting Extreme Temperature Events Using Gaussian Mixture Models

“…For example, almost all grid cells in the Mediterranean region follow a bimodal distribution, and the peaks of bimodal distribution will diverge in the future as shown in Figure 7. Mediterranean region is identified as one of the most responsive regions to climate change and a hot spot of climate extremes (Feng et al., 2022; IPCC, 2021). Similarly, Arctic regions are projected to have the highest increase in temperature of the coldest days (IPCC, 2021; C. Li et al., 2021).…”

Detecting Extreme Temperature Events Using Gaussian Mixture Models

“…For example, almost all grid cells in the Mediterranean region follow a bimodal distribution, and the peaks of bimodal distribution will diverge in the future as shown in Figure 7. Mediterranean region is identified as one of the most responsive regions to climate change and a hot spot of climate extremes (Feng et al, 2022;IPCC, 2021). Similarly, Arctic regions are projected to have the highest increase in temperature of the coldest days (IPCC, 2021; C. Li et al, 2021).…”

The role of soil temperature in mediterranean vineyards in a climate change context

“…Nonetheless, this trend observed for ST is expected to be more marked in Southern Europe. The Mediterranean region has a warm season transitional climate, in which evapotranspiration is limited by low soil moisture rather than by solar radiation ( Feng et al., 2022 ). In this context, low soil moisture will amplify heat anomalies and extremes in the region ( Seneviratne et al., 2010 ; Vogel et al., 2021 ; Feng et al., 2022 ) with a potential major impact on growth and yield of both crop and weed species.…”