Local climate change assessment at five pilot sites in the Mediterranean region

The objective of this study is to provide an overview of local climate change over the Mediterranean (MED)
area under the scope of the InTheMED project, EU funded in the framework of the PRIMA programme. Future
precipitation and temperature projections are assessed until the end of this century for five different pilot sites,
located in the MED region. To this end, the outputs of 17 Regional Climate Models under the RCP4.5 and
RCP8.5 scenarios are used. For each pilot site, the raw climate model data were downscaled at each monitoring
station location and bias-corrected on the basis of observations recorded in a 30-year historical period. The
changes in the annual precipitation are heterogeneous across the five pilot sites: a negligible variation is
expected for some areas and a decrease of up to 30% for others. On the contrary, a significant increase in
temperature is expected for all sites, confirming the ongoing warming in the MED region.