Impact of Climate Change on Extreme Precipitation and Flood Flows in the Eastern Black Sea Region-Turkey

This study aims to figure out the changes in extreme precipitation events and precipitation-induced maximum flows due to climate change in the Eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey. The Spearman's rho test was applied to the annual maximum daily precipitation and daily flow data to examine the temporal variation. The test results were interpreted at the 95% confidence interval, and no trend was detected. The annual maximum of daily precipitation projections of the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios obtained at a resolution of 10 km2 by downscaling from the MPI-ES-MR global climate model was used for statistical modeling of the projection period. According to the RCP 4.5 scenario, the 24-h maximum precipitation for the projection period increased by 20–46% for the 100-year return period compared to the observation period in Trabzon, Rize, Bayburt, and Artvin meteorological stations. On the other hand, there was a decrease between 12 and 42% in Gümüşhane, Giresun, and Ordu stations. According to the RCP8.5 scenario, the change in the 100-year return level between the observation and projection periods was 46% for all stations except for Gümüshane, with a decrease of 8%.