The future climate regions in Estonia

Abstract

It can be assumed that future climate changes may have diverse impact on different parts of Estonia. For the regionalization of climate change impacts we used outputs of the EURO-CORDEX climate model ensemble and added its relative changes for temperature and precipitation to the values of the model’s reference period 1971–2000. In order to reduce the ambiguity of spatially detailed outputs, the clusters of future climate variables for seasons were produced. We conclude that three climatic regions – the mainland, the coast and the western Estonian islands – will most likely persist in the future climate. Major regional changes may occur at the end of the 21st century according to the pessimistic scenario of Representative Concentration Pathways RCP8.5. In the rest of the cases, although the boundaries of regions may shift, the warming as well as the increase in precipitation will mainly occur within the regions. Partially this will result in the growth of contrasts between regions.