Detection of future changes in seasonality in extreme short-term rainfall in selected stations of Slovakia

Abstract

This paper analyses the projected changes in short-term rainfall events during the warm season (April–October) in an ensemble of 30 regional climate model (RCM) simulations. The seasonality analysis was done for the Hurbanovo, Bratislava, Oravská Lesná, and Myjava stations in Slovakia. The characteristics of maximum rainfall events were analysed for two scenario periods, one past and one future (1960–2000 and 2070–2100) and compared to the characteristics of the actual observed events. The main findings from the analysis show that short-term events of 60 minutes appear to have stronger seasonality than daily events that show a rather high variability. The seasonality concentration index calculated for the 60 min events averages to 0.77, while that of daily events averaged to 0.65. The differences between the dates of the occurrence of past and future events are not significant in the lowland areas, while in the mountainous areas the future events have been found to occur earlier than past ones.

Keywords

• seasonality analysis, short-term rainfall, rcm projections