Analysis of expected climate change in the Carpathian Basin using the PRUDENCE results

Expected temperature and precipitation changes are analyzed for the Carpathian Basin and, especially, in Hungary, for the 2071-2100 period using outputs of the PRUDENCE project for the A2 and B2 emission scenarios. Different regional climate models (RCMs) of PRUDENCE use 50 km as horizontal spatial resolution, which enables us to estimate the climate change on regional scale. Composite maps of the expected seasonal temperature change and trend analysis of extreme temperature indices suggest that a regional warming trend is evident in the Carpathian Basin. According to the results the largest warming is expected in summer. Negative temperature extremes are projected to decrease while positive extremes tend to increase significantly. The climate simulation results suggest that the expected change of annual total precipitation is not significant in the Carpathian Basin. However, significantly large and opposite trends are expected in different seasons. Seasonal precipitation amount is very likely to increase in winter, and it is expected to decrease in summer, which implies that the annual distribution of precipitation is expected to be restructured. The wettest summer season may become the driest (especially in case of A2 scenario), and the driest winter is expected to be the wettest by the end of the 21st century. The extreme precipitation events are expected to become more intense and more frequent in winter, while a general decrease of extreme precipitation indices is expected in summer.