Moisture Transport toward Europe and Extreme Precipitation Events

In the last decades an increase in extreme precipitation events was observed all over the world and, specifically, over Europe. The moisture transport from oceans toward the continent is one of the main factors affecting precipitation patterns. Due to the influence of climate change on moisture transport, investigating the changes in moisture transport from the oceanic sources is of especial interest; resulting especially relevant the association between transport changes and extreme precipitation events. For the European region, two main moisture sources were found to contribute to precipitation, namely the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. In this work, the lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART is applied in order to investigate the contribution from these two sources over the region. The moisture contribution is computed taking into account both, climatological mean and extreme precipitation events. From the result, a redistribution on the contribution from the source is observed associated with precipitation events.