Climate change assessment for Mediterranean agricultural areas by statistical downscaling

In this paper we produce projections of seasonal precipitation for four Mediterranean areas: Apulia region (Italy), Ebro river basin (Spain), Po valley (Italy) and An- talya province (Turkey). We performed the statistical down- scaling using Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) in two versions: in one case Principal Component Analysis (PCA) filter is applied only to predictor and in the other to both pre- dictor and predictand. After performing a validation test, CCA after PCA filter on both predictor and predictand has been chosen. Sea level pressure (SLP) is used as predictor. Downscaling has been carried out for the scenarios A2 and B2 on the basis of three GCM's: the CCCma-GCM2, the Csiro-MK2 and HadCM3. Three consecutive 30-year pe- riods have been considered. For Summer precipitation in Apulia region we also use the 500 hPa temperature (T500) as predictor, obtaining comparable results. Results show dif- ferent climate change signals in the four areas and confirm the need of an analysis that is capable of resolving internal differences within the Mediterranean region. The most ro- bust signal is the reduction of Summer precipitation in the Ebro river basin. Other significative results are the increase of precipitation over Apulia in Summer, the reduction over the Po-valley in Spring and Autumn and the increase over the Antalya province in Summer and Autumn.