Analysis of precipitation changes in Central Europe within the next decades based on simulations with a high resolution RCM ensemble

The 4th IPCC report summarises the effects on precipitation for Europe based on global climate models (GCM) simulations as follows: In northern Europe the climate will become moister – especially during winter – and the Mediterranean region will be much drier in the future – especially for the summer months than it is today. Central Europe lies in the transition region between these two regimes. This is reflected in the fact that the current GCMs do not give a consistent picture of the precipitation characteristics for this region in the 21 century. Possible reasons for that may be that mountain ridges like the Alps are not adequately accounted for in the coarse resolution of GCMs and that climate change induced changes in weather patterns are highly variable in this region. In this study we focus on that part of Central Europe situated between 47.5°N to 52°N and 5°E to 13°E (cf. Fig. 1).