Regional climate scenarios for use in Nordic water resources studies

TY - JOUR

T1 - Regional climate scenarios for use in Nordic water resources studies

AU - Rummukainen, Markku

AU - Räisänen, J.

AU - Bjørge, D.

AU - Christensen, J. H.

AU - Christensen, O. B.

AU - Iversen, T.

AU - Jylhä, K.

AU - Ólafsson, H.

AU - Tuomenvirta, H.

PY - 2003/12/1

Y1 - 2003/12/1

N2 - According to global climate projections, a substantial global climate change will occur during the next decades, under the assumption of continuous anthropogenic climate forcing. Global models, although fundamental in simulating the response of the climate system to anthropogenic forcing are typically geographically too coarse to well represent many regional or local features. In the Nordic region, climate studies are conducted in each of the Nordic countries to prepare regional climate projections with more detail than in global ones. Results so far indicate larger temperature changes in the Nordic region than in the global mean, regional increases and decreases in net precipitation, longer growing season, shorter snow season etc. These in turn affect runoff, snowpack, groundwater, soil frost and moisture, and thus hydropower production potential, flooding risks etc. Regional climate models do not yet fully incorporate hydrology. Water resources studies are carried out off-line using hydrological models. This requires archived meteorological output from climate models. This paper discusses Nordic regional climate scenarios for use in regional water resources studies. Potential end-users of water resources scenarios are the hydropower industry, dam safety instances and planners of other lasting infrastructure exposed to precipitation, river flows and flooding.

AB - According to global climate projections, a substantial global climate change will occur during the next decades, under the assumption of continuous anthropogenic climate forcing. Global models, although fundamental in simulating the response of the climate system to anthropogenic forcing are typically geographically too coarse to well represent many regional or local features. In the Nordic region, climate studies are conducted in each of the Nordic countries to prepare regional climate projections with more detail than in global ones. Results so far indicate larger temperature changes in the Nordic region than in the global mean, regional increases and decreases in net precipitation, longer growing season, shorter snow season etc. These in turn affect runoff, snowpack, groundwater, soil frost and moisture, and thus hydropower production potential, flooding risks etc. Regional climate models do not yet fully incorporate hydrology. Water resources studies are carried out off-line using hydrological models. This requires archived meteorological output from climate models. This paper discusses Nordic regional climate scenarios for use in regional water resources studies. Potential end-users of water resources scenarios are the hydropower industry, dam safety instances and planners of other lasting infrastructure exposed to precipitation, river flows and flooding.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=1442314051&partnerID=8YFLogxK

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:1442314051

SN - 1998-9563

VL - 34

SP - 399

EP - 412

JO - Hydrology Research

JF - Hydrology Research

IS - 5

ER -