https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/s10051-024-00792-3
Regular Article - Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Empirical analysis of hourly rainfall data in Sicily from 2002 to 2023
1
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Ettore Majorana”, Universitá di Catania, Via Santa Sofia, 64, 95123, Catania, Italy
2
Department of Mathematics, King’s College London, The Strand, WC2R 2LS, London, UK
3
SIAS, 95100, Catania, Italy
4
INFN Sezione di Catania, 95123, Catania, Italy
5
Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Josefstädter Straße 39, 1080, Vienna, Austria
6
Centro Ricerche Enrico Fermi, Via Panisperna 89 A, 00184, Rome, Italy
Received:
3
May
2024
Accepted:
18
September
2024
Published online:
10
October
2024
Rainfall constitutes an important climatic variable as its lack can lead to severe droughts while its excess can trigger catastrophic events. The Mediterranean basin is one of the European regions most affected by climate change’s effects and Sicily island, for its location in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, represents a very interesting place to study climatic variables. During the last decade, Sicily displayed unusual rainfall behavior and unexpected extreme events. In this paper, we depict how seasonal rainfall characteristics and trends changed since the beginning of twenty-first century. Using an empirical approach, we are able to confirm with a higher resolution previous results obtained through less granular data and detect the emergence of new anomalous behaviors. From our study we see that, after the heavy summer drought during 2009–2012, all seasons recorded a sudden volume variation: increasing during autumn–summer and decreasing in winter–spring. This coupled behavior emerges as an anomaly for the period 2013–2023: the similarity between summer–autumn and winter–spring highlights the passage from a 4 to a 2 season-like cycle,with the occurrence of severe droughts and frequent flash floods. The present contribution adds further evidence that a deep change is occurring and that new strategies for managing risks and resources are urgently needed to reduce human and economic losses.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2024. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
