Integrated projection for runoff changes in large russian river basins in the XXI century

Abstract

The paper discusses an approach to a long-term forecast of river runoff changes for Russian large river basins in the first third of the XXI century caused by climate warming and social-economic changes. The approach considers runoff changes under a range of possible climate warming effects. This range is chosen by generalizing the calculation results obtained by using an ensemble of global climate models within CMIP 3 and CMIP 5 experiments for two contrasting scenarios (A2/RCP 8.5 and B1/RCP 2.6) of globally averaged air temperature rises. The approach also utilizes a method for alternative scenario for water consumption related to socio-economic changes. The obtained scenario estimates show that expected changes in the Volga and Don annual river runoff and its intra-annual distribution in the first third of this century can be relatively small, while changes in water use characteristics may be extremely negative in some scenarios, especially in the Don River basin.