Ricerc@Sapienza

Water and its availability are among the main concerns of the contemporary world, and water crisis has been recurrently mentioned among then main risks of more significant concern of our modern times in the “Global Risk Report” of the World Economic Forum in the last years. Sustainability and water management are currently perceived as crucial challenges the modern times have to face and thus, the research and preservation of hydro-cultural landscapes rooted in the past, especially in arid countries, have received much attention in recent years.

We demonstrate that a nonhomogeneous hidden Markov model (NHMM) can be useful for simulating future daily rainfall at 19 stations in South Florida. Using upper atmosphere circulation variables that are typically better represented than precipitation in general circulation models (GCMs), a NHMM conditioned on GCM circulation variables is shown to provide credible stochastic simulations of daily precipitation for future conditions. Seasonality changes as well as changes in seasonal extreme precipitation quantiles, total seasonal rainfall, and number of wet days are assessed.

The increasing occurrence of widespread drought phenomena is a global environmental emergency, especially for the effects of ongoing climate change on groundwater availability. Dry years and extreme temperatures are common drivers of current climate impacts all over the world, including, for example, the freshwater supply for drinking and agriculture purposes, ecosystems, forestry, health, etc. In this frame, to ensure temporal water availability in water-stressed areas, sustainable groundwater management is an increasing challenge.