Extreme climatic periods in Eastern Slovakia lowlands

Abstract

The climate-induced natural disasters and occurrence of extraordinary weather events caused serious problems in many countries of the world. Changes in precipitation lead to changes in runoff and water availability. Intergovernmental panel on climate change states that runoff is projected with high confidence to increase by 10 to 40% by mid-century at higher latitudes and decrease by 10 to 30% over some dry regions at mid-latitudes due to decrease in rainfall and higher rates of evapotranspiration. The objective of this paper is to analyze variability of long-term precipitation data series over the last 30 years for climatic stations in Slovakia lowlands situated in the east of the country. Statistics of precipitation extremes, extraordinary summer rainfall event, and occurrence of wet and dry periods in different zones of special altitudinal profile in approximately 110 meters above the sea level are presented in this work.