Abstract
Urban areas are increasingly exposed to compound hydroclimatic pressures arising from intensified rainfall extremes, progressive warming and the growing sensitivity of urban drainage systems to short-duration rainfall events. However, future urban climate risk cannot be fully understood from changes in annual precipitation or temperature alone. This study investigates future urban hydroclimatic intensification in Trnava, Slovakia, using long-term meteorological observations, statistically downscaled CMIP6 climate projections, climate-extreme indices and a proposed Runoff-Generating Rainfall Index (RGRI). Future projections indicate that annual precipitation changes remain modest, whereas annual maximum 1-day and 5-day precipitation increase by approximately 37–41% and 17–19%, respectively. The RGRI further indicates greater concentration of annual precipitation in runoff-generating events, with significant increases in the contribution of very wet rainfall across all future scenarios. Concurrently, annual maximum air temperature increases from 35.9 °C to 38.6–38.7 °C, while warm-day and warm-night frequencies increase substantially relative to their historical thresholds, indicating both a warmer climate and more frequent warm extremes. Together, these findings highlight rainfall redistribution and progressive warming as key drivers of future urban hydroclimatic risk. The proposed framework provides a practical approach for hydroclimatic assessment and climate adaptation in medium-sized Central European cities with similar climatic and urban characteristics.
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Slovak Academy of Sciences Mobility Program (Project Code: Open-Mob-2024-04) for supporting international collaboration and facilitating scientific exchange.
Funding
This research was primarily supported by the project “STORMSustain: Sustainable Management of Urban Stormwater Runoff”, funded by the European Union’s NextGenerationEU initiative through the Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Slovak Republic (Project No. 09I03-03-V04-00203). Additional support was provided by the Slovak Academy of Sciences under Grant VEGA No. 2/0140/24, “Optimisation of Adaptation Measures for Extreme Torrential Rainfall in Urbanised Catchments.”
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Okhravi, S., Velísková, Y., Sokáč, M. et al. Rainfall redistribution and warming drive future urban hydroclimatic intensification in Trnava, Slovakia.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-69738-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-69738-2
Keywords
- Urban climate risk
- Pluvial flooding
- Runoff-generating rainfall
- Hydroclimatic extremes
- Central Europe
- Trnava
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