Revisiting precipitation variability, trends and drivers in the Canary Islands

• Published in: International Journal of Climatology
• Main Authors: Sánchez‐Benítez, Antonio, García Herrera, Ricardo, Vicente Serrano, Sergio M.
• Other Authors: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología, CICYT (España), European Commission, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (España), Universidad Complutense de Madrid
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: John Wiley & Sons 2017
• Subjects: Canary Islands; Precipitation; Trends; North Atlantic Oscillation; Weather types; Teleconnections; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/185381; https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4937; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100002911; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100007273; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000780; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003339; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003329

The Canary Islands are characterized by their low availability of water resources and different studies have suggested a decrease of precipitation in the second half of the 20th century. Here, we have used the most complete precipitation data set available in the islands to create a dense high quality and homogeneous database, which was used to determine the spatio‐temporal precipitation patterns in the archipelago and the influence of oceanic and atmospheric teleconnections. We have produced a robust regionalization of the Canary Islands precipitation, with three patterns that characterizing the south of the most montainous islands and El Hierro and La Gomera, the north of the most montainous islands and the easternmost arid islands (Lanzarote and Fuerteventura), respectively. All of them show high interannual variability, with no significant trends, except in a few cases. We highlight the strong influence of weather types and teleconections, modulated by the orography, with the highest influence recorded in the first pattern. It must be stressed that the oceanic teleconnections (in special with the tropical North Atlantic surface temperature) are more important than the North Atlantic Oscillation to explain interannual variability of precipitation. This work was supported by the research projects CGL2014‐52135‐C03‐01 and Red de variabilidad y cambio climático RECLIM (CGL2014‐517221‐REDT) financed by the Spanish Commission of Science and Technology and FEDER. A.S.B. received a JAE Intro 2015 fellowship supported by CSIC and a predoctoral fellowship CT45/15‐CT46/15 supported by the Complutense University of Madrid. Peer reviewed