Why is the content of this map important?
The river runoff is the amount of water entering local rivers and the discharge is the accumulation of all upstream runoff. Both variables are essential for making projections of floods, low flow and salt intrusion.
Which sectors are affected by this result?
River runoff affects inland navigation, as well as hydropower potential and the availability of cooling water for thermo-electric power plants.
What is shown on the maps?
Details and further information:
The maps of annual mean runoff during the reference period show that the spatial distribution of runoff resembles that of precipitation. Outside the precipitation-rich mountain ranges much of the precipitation is lost by evapotranspiration, especially in large parts of East Europe and Spain, where the generation of runoff is less than 0.3 mm/day. A considerable part of Europe’s river runoff and discharge derives from the major mountain ranges, where in large parts runoff exceeds 3 mm/day.
To investigate this, the ensemble of five hydrological models (E-HYPE, Lisflood, LPJmL, VIC and WBM) has been driven by the ensemble of the five mandatory climate simulations. Hence, the ensemble consists of 25 simulations in total.
The calculations are carried out and displayed only for the grid points where the output of all hydrological models is available.
Wouter Greuell
Wageningen Universiteit (WU), Netherlands