Climate Changes in Slovakia: Analysis of Past and Present Observations and Scenarios of Future Developments

Abstract

Based on the modified model outputs and the measured data from meteorological stations for the period 1951–2016, the scenarios of climate change were calculated up to the time horizon of the year 2100. The alternative IPCC emission scenarios, the SRES A2, A1B, and B1, were applied. Scenarios for the variables: the maxima and minima of the air temperature, the daily means of the relative air humidity, the daily precipitation totals, the daily means of wind speed, daily totals of the global radiation, and also the water balance elements and the snow cover characteristics have been prepared. On the basis of the statistics obtained from the measured and modeled data, we adjusted the modeled data in the future in such a way as to best capture the predicted climatic characteristics of the region. The results show the case of air temperature that means an increase in the 30-year averages by about 2–4?C up to the end of the twenty-first century. Precipitation totals will also change in a relatively wide range, but generally, an increase of about 10% in annual totals is expected, more in the north and less in the south part of Slovakia. These scenarios can be successfully used to prepare studies on the impacts of and the vulnerability to climate change in different economic sectors.