Abstract:
This study characterizes the future changes in extreme rainfall and air temperature in the
Mono river basin where the main economic activity is weather dependent and local populations
are highly vulnerable to natural hazards, including flood inundations. Daily precipitation and
temperature from observational datasets and Regional Climate Models (RCMs) output from REMO,
RegCM, HadRM3, and RCA were used to analyze climatic variations in space and time, and fit a
GEV model to investigate the extreme rainfalls and their return periods. The results indicate that
the realism of the simulated climate in this domain is mainly controlled by the choice of the RCMs.
These RCMs projected a 1 to 1.5 C temperature increase by 2050 while the projected trends for
cumulated precipitation are null or very moderate and diverge among models. Contrasting results
were obtained for the intense rainfall events, with RegCM and HadRM3 pointing to a significant
increase in the intensity of extreme rainfall events. The GEV model is well suited for the prediction of
heavy rainfall events although there are uncertainties beyond the 90th percentile. The annual maxima
of daily precipitation will also increase by 2050 and could be of benefit to the ecosystem services and
socioeconomic activities in the Mono river basin but could also be a threat.
