Near future climate change projections with implications for the agricultural sector of three major Mediterranean islands

The paper presents the analysis of a sub-set of high-resolution bias-adjusted simulations from the EURO-CORDEX initiative, in order to examine the changes in the mean climate and the extremes in three Mediterranean islands, namely, Sicily, Crete and Cyprus, in the near future (2031–2060) compared to the present climate (1971–2000), under two future scenarios, i.e. RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The analysis entails commonly used climatic indices of interest related to the islands’ agricultural sector. The results indicate robust increases for both the mean maximum and minimum temperatures on a seasonal basis, as well as for the temperature related extremes under both climate scenarios. On the contrary, the changes in precipitation are less pronounced as the changes in the seasonal precipitation are not found statistically significant for the three islands under both scenarios. The projected warming combined with the projected unchanged precipitation pattern in the future, especially in spring and summer, might expose the crops to conditions with a negative impact on the plants’ phenology, leading to implications on crop production and quality. The results presented here might be the basis for the development of an adaptation strategy specifically targeted on the three islands but also replicable to other Mediterranean islands.