PROJECTIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE FOR THE CZECH REPUBLIC

The paper deals with a selection of the climatological baseline, GCM validity and construction of the climate change scenarios for an impact assessment in the Czech territory. The period of 1961–1990 has been selected as the climatological baseline. The corresponding database includes more than 50 monthly mean temperature and precipitation series, and 16 time series of daily meteorological data that contain also the solar radiation data. The 1× CO₂ outputs produced by four GCMs, provided by the CSMT (GISS, GFD30, GFD01, and CCCM), were compared with observed temperature and precipitation conditions in western and central Europe with a particular attention devoted to the Czech territory. The GCM ability to simulate annual cycles of temperature, precipitation and radiation was thoroughly examined. The GISS and CCCM were selected as a basis for constructing climate change scenarios as they simulated reasonably the observed patterns. According to the GISS variant, 2× CO₂ climate assumes a higher winter and lower summer warming, and an increase in annual precipitation amounts. A dangerous combination of the summer temperature increase and declining precipitation amounts is a specific feature of the CCCM scenario. An incremental scenario for temperature and precipitation is based on the combination of prescribed changes in both annual means and annual courses.