Abstract
Climate change is inherently linked to long-term non-stationary changes in the characteristics and frequency of weather patterns. The present study attempts to identify the statistical changes of weather patterns in Athens Greece, from the comparative assessment of 96-h backward trajectories between historic (1980–2009) and future (2020–2049) climatology derived from the IPCC RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. Arrival heights at 750 m, 1500 m, and 3000 m above sea level are considered to account for the impact of the planetary boundary layer and the lower free troposphere. The analysis of the historic period yields 7 dominant patterns for all heights determined independently, with similar spatial characteristics but varying frequency of occurrence. The classification of backward trajectories under future climate using the same historic clusters reveals percentage changes from locally short-distance travelling patterns to longer-distance ones with a predominant northbound direction. As a second experiment, backward trajectories are re-clustered independently reaching again the same type of clusters but with observable changes in the cluster origins and trajectory lengths.
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Availability of data and material
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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No code was developed in the current study.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge partial funding by the project “National Research Network for Climate Change and its Impacts, (CLIMPACT - 105658/17-10-2019)” of the Ministry of Development, GSRT, Program of Public Investment, 2019. Financial support from Project WINDSURFER, which is part of ERA4CS (GA 690462), an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by UREAD, CMCC, MET Norway, FMI, UC-IHC, MetEireann, KNMI, and NCSRD with co-funding by the European Union, is kindly acknowledged.
This work was supported by computational time granted from the Greek Research & Technology Network (GRNET) in the National HPC facility - ARIS - under project ID HRCOG (pr004020).
Funding
The authors acknowledge partial funding by the project “National Research Network for Climate Change and its Impacts, (CLIMPACT - 105658/17-10-2019)” of the Ministry of Development, GSRT, Program of Public Investment, 2019. Financial support from Project WINDSURFER, which is part of ERA4CS (GA 690462), an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by UREAD, CMCC, MET Norway, FMI, UC-IHC, MetEireann, KNMI, and NCSRD with co-funding by the European Union, is kindly acknowledged.
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All the authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection and analysis were performed by S. Karozis and A. Sfetsos. Material preparation was performed by N. Gounaris. The first draft of the manuscript was written by S. Karozis and all the authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. The final review and editing was performed by D. Vlachogianni. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Karozis, S., Sfetsos, A., Gounaris, N. et al. An assessment of climate change impact on air masses arriving in Athens, Greece. Theor Appl Climatol 145, 501–517 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03624-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03624-x