SUMMARY

The aim of the project is to improve our knowledge of rainfall irregularity and variability over the Spanish Peninsula and Balearic Islands, from the daily to the centennial scale, paying special attention to the Peninsula-Balearic Islands connexions.

With this objective, an instrumental daily (with 40 observatories, 1951-90) and monthly (with 50 observatories covering more than a century) data-base will be homogeneized together with historical data-bases (proxy-data) over Catalonia and Balearic Islands.

The main goals of the proposal are: to assess the yearly, seasonally and monthly rainfall irregularity by means of temporal irregularity indices; to analyze the daily rainfall persistence and concentration; to assess the fractal distribution of precipitation; to define an index of variability, irregularity, persistence and fractality, and its regional distribution over the area of study, as well as to analyze the connexions patterns; to study the plurisecular evolution of rainfall irregularity, and to define future scenarios of precipitation over the Western Mediterranean.

The results obtained will improve our knowledge of the WeMO and the evolution of the probability of dry and rainy sequences, will fix rainfall anomalies hazards depending on the regions and will be used to determine rainfall variability trends. As a result, and from another point of view, the results could be applied to define rainfall hazards, soil degradation and hydrological policies.