Prognostic simulation and analysis of the impact of climate change on the hydrological dynamics in Thuringia, Germany

Abstract. The impact of predicted climate change on the hydrological dynamics and long term hydrological balance in the federal German state Thuringia was investigated and analysed. For this study the prognostic climate data, provided by the statistical regionalisation approach WETTREG, which is based on results of the global climate model ECHAM5/MPI-OM, was used. This regional climate model provides synthetic climate time series for the existent precipitation and climate station in Germany from 2000 to 2100. This data was processed with the hydrological model J2000g which we used for the regionalisation of the climatological time series data and for the computation of potential and actual evapotranspiration, runoff generation and groundwater recharge.

In this study we analysed the two emission scenarios A2 and B1, defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and their impact on the temporal and spatial distribution of temperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration and runoff generation for the time frame 2071–2100 for the entire area of the German state of Thuringia. For this purpose we compared simulation with the scenario data with simulation results based on reference data from 1971–2000. The comparison showed an increase of the mean annual temperature of 1.8 (B1) to 2.2 (A2) °C which is much more distinct during winter. The mean annual precipitation is decreasing only slightly but, the seasonal spatio-temporal rainfall distribution which has major impact on the hydrological water balance is changing significantly. This pattern change results in more precipitation during winter and less in summer. Actual evapotranspiration was computed higher for both scenarios compared to the evapotranspiration of the reference period 1971–2000. As a follow up a decrease in the runoff generation was simulated which was again very variable in space and time.

The overall trends worked out in this study showed that it is likely that the extremes of flooding in winter and dry spells in summer might occur more often in Thuringia because of the changing weather conditions due to climate change.