Precipitation extremes in a EURO-CORDEX 0.11° ensemble at hourly resolution

Abstract

Abstract. Regional climate model simulations have routinely been applied to assess changes in precipitation extremes at daily time steps. However, shorter sub-daily extremes have not received as much attention. This is likely because of the limited availability of high temporal resolution data, both for observations and for model outputs. Here, summertime depth duration frequencies of a sub-set of the EURO-CORDEX 0.11° ensemble is evaluated with observations for several European countries for durations of one to 12 h. Most of the model simulations strongly underestimate 10-year depths for durations up to a few hours, but do better on 12 h durations. All models fail in reproducing observed spatial patterns over Germany for durations shorter than 12 h, but all reproduce the pattern at least partly at 12 h duration. Large-scale driven spatial patterns, such as the extreme depths in southern France are better captured also at shorter durations, albeit severely underestimated. Projected changes are assessed by relating relative depth changes to mean temperature changes. A strong relationship with temperature is found across sub-regions of Europe, the emission scenario and future time period. However, there is an equally strong dependency on the global and regional model applied, with a spread in scaling of around 1–10 %/K at 12 h duration, and generally higher values at shorter durations.