Near future climate change projections with implications for the agricultural sector of three major Mediterranean islands

Abstract

The paper presents the analysis of a sub-set of high-resolution bias-adjusted simulations from the EURO-CORDEX initiative, in order to examine the changes in the mean climate and the extremes in three Mediterranean islands, namely, Sicily, Crete and Cyprus, in the near future (2031–2060) compared to the present climate (1971–2000), under two future scenarios, i.e. RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The analysis entails commonly used climatic indices of interest related to the islands’ agricultural sector. The results indicate robust increases for both the mean maximum and minimum temperatures on a seasonal basis, as well as for the temperature related extremes under both climate scenarios. On the contrary, the changes in precipitation are less pronounced as the changes in the seasonal precipitation are not found statistically significant for the three islands under both scenarios. The projected warming combined with the projected unchanged precipitation pattern in the future, especially in spring and summer, might expose the crops to conditions with a negative impact on the plants’ phenology, leading to implications on crop production and quality. The results presented here might be the basis for the development of an adaptation strategy specifically targeted on the three islands but also replicable to other Mediterranean islands.

Climate Change and Weather Extremes in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East

“…The mid-century projections for RCP8.5 are in between (2-2.5°C). Previous national or regional assessments have been developed for the region or parts of it (Zanis et al, 2009;Hadjinicolaou et al, 2011;Lelieveld et al, 2016Lelieveld et al, , 2012Önol and Unal, 2014;Jacob et al, 2014;Bucchignani et al, 2018;Ozturk et al, 2018;Hochman et al, 2018c;Mostafa et al, 2019;Zittis et al, 2019Zittis et al, , 2020Almazroui et al, 2020;Driouech et al, 2020a;Drobinski et al, 2020;Giannakis et al, 2020;Varotsos et al, 2021;Coppola et al, 2021a;Georgoulias et al, 2022). Although different models, pathways and/or scenarios might have been used, the ranges of projected temperature trends, warming patterns and significance levels are in close agreement with the present, updated analysis.…”

“…Previous national or regional assessments have been developed for the region or parts of it (Almazroui et al., 2020; Bucchignani et al., 2018; Coppola, Raffaele, et al., 2021; Driouech et al., 2020; Drobinski et al., 2020; Georgoulias et al., 2022; Giannakis et al., 2020; Hadjinicolaou et al., 2011; Hochman, Mercogliano, 2018; Jacob et al., 2014; Lelieveld et al., 2012, 2016; Mostafa et al., 2019; Önol & Unal, 2014; Ozturk et al., 2018; Varotsos et al., 2021; Zanis et al., 2009; Zittis et al., 2019, 2020). Although different models, pathways and/or scenarios might have been used, the ranges of projected temperature trends, warming patterns and significance levels are in close agreement with the present, updated analysis.…”

“…The projected transition to warmer and drier bio‐climatic conditions can be expected to severely affect agriculture and thus food production. Key Mediterranean crops (e.g., olives, vines, legumes, wheat, barley, and maize) will be strongly affected by the combined effect of prolonged drought periods and increased thermal stress (Al‐Bakri et al., 2011; Constantinidou et al., 2016; Giannakopoulos et al., 2009; Kitsara et al., 2021; Lazoglou & Anagnostolpoulou, 2017; Papadaskalopoulou et al., 2020; Sen et al., 2012; Varotsos et al., 2021; Verner et al., 2018). This is mostly relevant for summer crops in the region.…”

Climate change and its impacts in the Balearic Islands: a guide for policy design in Mediterranean regions

“…Climate prediction models indicate warming will cause substantial changes in global agriculture (IPCC 2014 ) which will be of particular importance in Mediterranean regions (del Pozo et al 2019 ; Santillán et al 2020 ; Varotsos et al 2021 ). Temperature increase, changes in precipitation distribution and more intense and frequent extreme events (e.g.…”

Using a new local high resolution daily gridded dataset for Attica to statistically downscale climate projections

“…In particular dynamical downscaling is based on climate models information with physical principles implemented in their code to reproduce local climates, but is computationally intensive. Statistical downscaling and bias adjustment are less computationally intensive and can be easily applied but they rely on the availability of high-quality long term observational records for a number of variables, both from station data and/or gridded observational datasets to establish robust predictor-predictant relationships and to adjust the raw model output, respectively (Casanuneva et al 2020;Manzanas et al 2020;Varotsos et al 2021). Regarding gridded observational datasets, E-OBS is considered the state-of-the art dataset for the European domain with a resolution of 0.1° (Cornes et al 2018).…”