Regional Model Simulation of the Meteorological Effects induced by the Land Use Changes in the Abruzzo Region in the last 20 years: preliminary results for few case studies

Climate changes at regional scale are connected to many factors one of the most important being the changes in the land vegetation cover. A quantitative evaluation of such effects are also difficult to obtain due to the complex land-atmosphere interactions. In this study we analyse the possible hydrometeorological effects linked to the drainage of Fucino’s Lake in the nineteenth century and the changes for few meteorological case studies linked to the vegetation cover modification over Abruzzo region in the central Italy in the last twenty years. To this purpose MM5 limited area model has been used. As a first preliminary step, several different meteorological case studies have been simulated with MM5 model forced with the two different land used scenarios. Results show significant changes in the rainfall spatial distribution, while the differences for the circulation appear to be negligible and changes in the surface temperature are spatially limited; nevertheless, as also suggested by other authors, such local temperature changes are as large as those that result from the anthropogenic increase of greenhouse gases.