Abstract. In this study, the trends and variability of annual precipitation totals and annual rain days over land within the Mediterranean region are analyzed. Long term groundbased observations concerning, on one hand, monthly precipitation totals and rain days from 40 meteorological stations within the Mediterranean region were obtained from the Hellenic National Meteorological Service and the World Climate Data and Monitoring Programme (WCDMP) of the World Meteorological Organization. On the other hand, high spatial resolution (0.5 • × 0.5 • ) gridded monthly data CRU TS 3.1 were acquired from the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, for the period 1901-2009. The two datasets were compared by means of trends and variability, while the influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in the Mediterranean precipitation was examined. In the process, the climatic changes in the precipitation regime between the period 1961-1990 (reference period) and the period 2071-2100 (future climate) were presented using climate model simulations (RACMO2.1/KNMI). The future climate projections were based on SRES A1B.The findings of the analysis showed that statistically significant (95 % confidence level) negative trends of the annual precipitation totals exist in the majority of Mediterranean regions during the period 1901-2009, with an exception of northern Africa, southern Italy and western Iberian peninsula, where slight positive trends (not statistically significant at 95 % CL) appear. Concerning the annual number of rain days, a pronounced decrease of 20 %, statistically significant (95 % confidence level), appears in representative meteorological stations of east Mediterranean, while the trends are insignificant for west and central Mediterranean. Additionally, NAO index was found to be anticorrelated with the Correspondence to: P. T. Nastos (nastos@geol.uoa.gr) precipitation totals and the number of rain days mainly in Spain, southern France, Italy and Greece. These correlations are higher within the rain season (October-March) than the entire year. Based on the results of regional climate model RACMO2.1/KNMI, precipitation is very likely to decrease almost 20 % in the period 2071-2100 compared to 1961-1990

This study investigates the simulated changes in temperature and precipitation over Greece from nine Regional Climate Models (RCMs) for the period 2071-2100 under the A2 emission scenario and evaluates their performance during the control period 1961-1990 using Greek gridded datasets of temperature and precipitation. In winter, most RCMs show a bias towards warmer and dryer conditions and a bias towards higher inter-annual temperature variability and lower inter-annual variability of precipitation than the Greek gridded datasets during the control period . In summer, all RCMs show a cold bias for the maritime sub-regions and generally all sub-regions show very small biases in precipitation. Concerning the future projections of the RCMs for Greece the mean change of the nine RCMs for the mean air temperature, T 2mean, between the future period and the control period for the integrated Greek domain is 3.4°C for winter and 4.5°C for summer with the changes being larger in continental than in the marine sub-regions. The inter-annual temperature variability in the future simulations generally increases in summer and decreases in winter almost for all RCMs with these changes being larger in the continental sub-regions than in maritime sub-regions of Greece. Almost all RCMs simulate a decrease of the precipitation for the future climate for both winter and summer with the inter-annual variability of summer precipitation decreasing for the majority of RCMs. The reported future climatic changes will have important impacts for the region of Greece in vital sectors such as water resources, agriculture, tourism, forest fire risk and energy demand.

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