ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT As consequence of global warming extreme weather events might become more frequent and severe across the globe. The evaluation of the impact of climate change on extremes is then a crucial issue for the resilience of infrastructures and buildings and is a key challenge for adaptation planning. In this paper, a suitable procedure for the definition of future trends of thermal actions at local scale starting from the output of Regional Climate Models (RCMs) is presented, considering the different sources of uncertainty affecting climate projections (emissions scenario, global climate model, internal variability). An ensemble of six different climate models have been analyzed to identify factor of changes for daily maximum and minimum air temperatures. The results are presented for the Italian Mediterranean region proving the ability of the method to define factors of change for climate extremes as well as to assess their evolution in time, also allowing a sound estimate of the uncertainty range associated with different models.
