Regional climate change impacts: I. Impacts on water resources

Abstract

Abstract Regional effects of greenhouse warming on water resources, and more specifically on surface runoff, are assessed for a mountainous region of central Greece comprising four drainage basins by using a conceptual model and plausible hypothetical scenarios of temperature and precipitation change. Results show considerable sensitivity of runoff characteristics to climate change and indicate certain basin morphoclimatic characteristics such as snow cover, basin aridity and morphology, runoff coefficients etc., which modify considerably basin response. Research work is complemented by assessing the climate change impacts on water management works of the area. This second part of the work is published separately in the following paper in this issue.