Impact of extreme rainfall events on landslide activity in Portugal under climate change scenarios

Abstract Rainfall is considered the most important physical process for landslide triggering in Portugal. It expected that changes precipitation regimes region, as a direct consequence of climate change, will have influence occurrence extreme rainfall events be more frequently, throughout century. The aim this study relied on assessment projected future over Portugal mainland and quantifying correlation between through Triggering Thresholds (RTTs). This methodology was applied two specific locations within Portuguese areas great geomorphological interest. To analyze past frequency events, we resorted to DISASTER database. evaluate possible precipitation, used Iberia02 dataset EURO-CORDEX models’ runs at 0.11° spatial resolution. analyzed performance simulate values series. simulated RCM-GCM runs, from EURO-CORDEX, multimodel ensemble mean. associated highest percentiles, RTTs’ percentiles. series, both representative percentiles comparison made historical (1971–2000) (2071–2100), considering concentration scenarios: RCP 4.5 8.5. In performance, mean appeared best representing models. As end century, when following scenario, models an increase values, whereas, 8.5 decrease values.