Attributing icing precipitations trend (1951-2098) in the context of climate change in Europe

Abstract

Freezing rain and wet snow, both mentioned as “icing precipitation” in this study, are wintertime climatic events that can lead severe damages for environment and societies. At the European scale, only few studies focused on these climatic events, in comparison with North America. The objectives of this study is (i) to apprehend the actual and future spatio-temporal variability of the “high-impact Icing Precipitation favourable Days” (IPDs), and (ii) to explore the dominating climate variable controlling the IPD trends between the temperature (thermal conditions) and the precipitation (vulnerability conditions), because of the uncertainties of the future projections. Daily minimum, maximum near surface temperatures and accumulated precipitations from the E-OBS (historical period; 1951-2018) and from the Euro-Cordex initiative (future simulations; 2026-2098) are used to apprehend the IPDs. For the historical period, no clear trend emerges, either for the IPDs evolution and for the influential climate variable. For both the near- and long-term horizons, models simulate a decrease in the frequencies of IPDs that should affect almost all of Europe, except for the Scandinavia region. In addition, there would be a strong contribution of the temperature, climatic variable well simulated by regional models, as the most influential climatic conditions in the future variability of the IPDs.