The (un)certainty of Climate Change

The Dutch National Administrative Agreement on Water (Nationaal Bestuursakkoord Water) uses projected precipitation changes derived from a climate change scenario with a global temperature rise of 1ºC in 2050 and 2ºC at the end of the 21e century.

FutureWater and KNMI compared precipitation projections based on large scale, General Circulation Models (GCM) with the projection used in the Dutch National Administrative Agreement on Water.

Results show a rather large variation of precipitation projections, especially in winter, for the different General Circulation Models used.

However most of the GCM’s project more precipitation in the future than the Dutch National Administrative Agreement on Water. This can be partly attributed to the different emission scenarios (SRES).

Current and future research will lead to more accurate precipitation projections for the Netherlands.