Observed and projected climate change in the European region during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries according to Feddema

Abstract

Climate change in the European region during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is analyzed according to Feddema’s method. Precipitation and air temperature data from the twentieth century are taken from the Climatic Research Unit, while data for the twenty-first century are taken from the ENSEMBLES climate change project. The latter were bias-corrected to ensure homogeneity across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Climate classes based on monthly and annual values of potential evapotranspiration, precipitation and their ratio, are defined for 30-year averages, from which trend and spatial agreement analysis are calculated. There are separate classes for annual values and for intra-annual variation. The results indicate that the change of annual climate characteristics will be much more intense in the twenty-first than it was in the twentieth century. The dominant process in the projections is warming, mostly via cold to cool (about 45% of grid points) in north Europe and cool to warm (about 8% of grid points) transformations. The second most important process is the drying of moderately moist classes affecting about 10% of the grid points in south Europe. Changes in intra-annual variability classes are more common than changes in the annual ones during the twentieth century. The chance of increase in intra-annual temperature variation from high to extreme is about 5% during the course of the twentieth century, and about 10% in the following century.