How have daily climate extremes changed in the recent past over northeastern Argentina?

摘要

Changes in climate extremes affect socioeconomics and natural systems in northeastern Argentina (NEA) and may increase its vulnerability leading to unprecedented disasters. This study investigates the long-term changes and interannual variability of daily temperature and precipitation climate extremes and assesses to what extent global reanalyses reproduce the observed variability in the recent past. Datasets include quality-controlled observations (1963-2013) and ERA-Interim and NCEP2 reanalyses (1979-2011). Climate extremes are characterized spatially and temporally by 15 indices proposed by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices. The leading modes of the area-averaged index time series were obtained by means of a Singular Spectrum Analysis, while the spatial distribution of mean changes was estimated by fitting nonparametric linear trends to each index time series.