Climate change in the Ukrainian Carpathians and its possible impact on river runoff

Abstract

Based on the results of regular monitoring at 11 meteorological stations in the Ukrainian Carpathians, it was discovered a vivid tendency of air temperature increase. It was defined that thermal gradient in the mountains is much less than it is in the free troposphere; at the small altitude it is larger than it is on the tops of mountains. The largest gradient it is observed in period from March till July, the lowest one in period from November till January. It was revealed the cyclical fluctuations of precipitation, in particular the existence of a modern dry phase. There is a tendency of decrease in wind speed during all seasons, which is more evident in the second part of year. There is also the increase in snow cover depth at high altitude. In spite of climate change the river runoff has not changed essentially for the last decades. Like the precipitation the river runoff is of a cyclic nature too. During the last four decades the increase in evaporation, calculated on the base of water balance, has been observed. There is the tendency of runoff increase in a cold period at the large altitude. In turn the water runoff of rivers, located on low-mountain terrain, decreases in the summer period.

Climate impact on flood changes – an Austrian-Ukrainian comparison

“…This led to a shift in the average timing of the annual flood peaks from spring to autumn. The results obtained here are in good agreement with previous studies (Blöschl et al, 2017(Blöschl et al, , 2019Vyshnevskyi and Donich, 2021), which revealed a trend towards an increase in runoff during the cold period of the year and a shift in the timing of the annual maxima to later in the year. (1960-1987 and 1988-2015).…”

The Main Features of Transformed Seawater Penetration in the Dniester River Mouth at Surges Caused by Storm Winds

“…The search for statistically signi cant trends in the uctuations of the Dniester mountain tributaries' monthly ow maxima, had established no stable trends to their decrease or increase at the beginning of the 21st century [16]. The studies performed [27] also have established no signi cant change in their annual discharge at the beginning of the 21st century as their ow is formed predominantly due to precipitation.…”

Snow cover in the Ukrainian Carpathians

“…Climate change in the mountains, in particular of air temperature and snow cover is a popular issue of many scientific studies. Their results showed a trend towards temperature increase (Holko et al, 2020;Marin et al, 2014;Marty and Meister, 2012;Migala et al, 2016;Tomczyk et al, 2021;Vyshnevskyi and Donich, 2021). This increase has been accelerating in recent decades.…”

“…The precipitation, in particular, in the cold period, generally did not change essentially (Repel et al, 2021;Rožnovský et al, 2020;Kubiak-Wojcicka, 2020). Many studies show the decrease tendency of wind speed (Birsan et al, 2020;Marin et al, 2014;Spinoni et al, 2015;Vyshnevskyi and Donich, 2021). It is important that the decrease of maximum monthly wind speed exceeds the decrease of mean monthly wind speed.…”