Climate change impact on reservoir water supply reliability

Climate is changing gradually as a result of the increased greenhouse effect. Changed climate conditions affect many processes within the landscape and many spheres of our life can thus be influenced. In this contribution, we study the ability of water reservoirs to ensure a required water demand under changed climate conditions. The aim of the first part was to prepare regional scenarios of air temperature and precipitation for some meteorological stations in eastern Slovakia under the assumption of an enhanced greenhouse effect according to two climate models. Reservoir water supply reliability was calculated using the water balance model "WBMOD" that works with a monthly time step. The input data series of precipitation and air temperature and the observed reservoir outflows were used to express the expected changes in the total runoff and the required reservoir capacity. Failures in the required water supply both in volume and in time were evaluated for changed climate conditions.