Evaluation of Current Trends of Climatic Actions in Europe Based on Observations and Regional Reanalysis

Abstract

Since extreme values of climatic actions are commonly derived assuming the climate being stationary over time, engineering structures and infrastructures are designed considering design actions derived under this assumption. Owing to the increased relevance of the expected climate change effects and the correlated variations of climate actions extremes, ad hoc strategies for future adaption of design loads are needed. Moreover, as current European maps for climatic actions are generally based on observations collected more than 20 years ago, they should be updated. By a suitable elaboration of the projections of future climate changes, the evolution over time of climatic actions can be assessed; this basic and crucial information allows us to facilitate future adaptations of climatic load maps, thus improving the climate resilience of structures and infrastructures. In this paper, current trends of climatic actions in Europe, daily maximum and minimum temperatures, daily precipitation, and ground snow loads, are investigated based on available gridded datasets of observations (E-OBS) and regional reanalysis (Uncertainties in Ensembles of Regional Re-Analyses, UERRA), to assess their suitability to be used in the elaboration of maps for climatic actions. The results indicate that the E-OBS gridded datasets reproduce trends in extreme temperatures and precipitation well in the investigated regions, while reanalysis data, which include snow water equivalent, show biases in the assessment of ground snow load modifications over the years in comparison with measurements. As far as climate change effects are concerned, trends of variation of climatic actions are estimated considering subsequent time windows, 40 years in duration, covering the period 1950–2020. Results, in terms of factors of change, are critically discussed, also in comparison with the elaborations of reliable datasets of real observations, considering a case study covering Germany and Switzerland.