Forecasted changes in the climate and the river runoff regime in Latvian river basins

The hydrological model HBV (Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalansavdelning model) has been applied to six river basins in Latvia to assess climate change and its impacts on the river runoff regime at the end of the 21st century. Climate change has been predicted by applying the regional climate model RCAO with the driving boundary conditions from the global general circulation model HadAM3H applied for the IPCC scenarios A2 and B2 and the following time periods: 1961–1990 (control) and 2071–2100 (scenario). Changes have been found under both scenarios. Major changes in the future hydro-climate data were forecasted according to the A2 scenario, where the trends of increase are identified for the …