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The scenario forecasting technique for assessing changes of water balance components of the northern river basins due to possible climate change was developed. Three IPCC global emission scenarios corresponding to different possible scenarios for economic, technological, political and demographic development of the human civilization in the 21st century were chosen for generating climate change projections by an ensemble of 16 General Circulation Models with a high spatial resolution. The projections representing increments of monthly values of meteorological characteristics were used for creating 3-hour meteorological time series up to 2063 for the Northern Dvina River basin, which belongs to the pan-Arctic basin and locates at the north of the European part of Russia. The obtained time series were applied as forcing data to drive the land surface model SWAP to simulate possible changes in the water balance components due to different scenarios of climate change for the Northern Dvina River basin

In order to study the possibility of reproducing river runoff with making use of the land surface model Soil Water-Atmosphere-Plants (SWAP) and information based on global data sets 11 river basins suggested within the framework of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project and located in various regions of the globe under a wide variety of natural conditions were used. Schematization of each basin as a set of 0.5° × 0.5° computational grid cells connected by a river network was carried out. Input data including atmospheric forcing data and land surface parameters based, respectively, on the global WATCH and ECOCLIMAP data sets were prepared for each grid cell. Simulations of river runoff performed by SWAP with a priori input data showed poor agreement with observations. Optimization of a number of model parameters substantially improved the results. The obtained results confirm the universal character of SWAP. Natural uncertainty of river runoff caused by weather noise was estimated and analysed. It can be treated as the lowest limit of predictability of river runoff. It was shown that differences in runoff uncertainties obtained for different rivers depend greatly on natural conditions of a river basin, in particular, on the ratio of deterministic and random components of the river runoff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessments of hydrological response to climatic changes are characterized by different types of uncertainties. Here, the uncertainty caused by weather noise associated with the chaotic character of atmospheric processes is considered. A technique for estimating such uncertainty in simulated water balance components based on application of the land surface model SWAP and the climate model ECHAM5 is described. The technique is applied for estimating the uncertainties in the simulated water balance components (precipitation, river runoff and evapotranspiration) of some northern river basins of Russia. It is shown that the larger the area of a basin the less the uncertainty. This dependency is smoothed by differences in natural conditions of the basins. Analysis of the spectral densities of water balance components shows that a river basin filters out high-frequency harmonics of spectral density of precipitation (corresponding to synoptic or sub-seasonal scale) during its transformation into evapotranspiration and especially into runoff.EDITOR D. KoutsoyiannisASSOCIATE EDITOR H. Kreibich [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present newmeasurements of the abundance of galaxies with a given circular velocity in the Local Volume: a region centred on the MilkyWay Galaxy and extending to distance ~10 Mpc. The sample of ~750 mostly dwarf galaxies provides a unique opportunity to study the abundance and properties of galaxies down to absolute magnitudes MB ≈ -10 and virial masses Mvir = 109M⊙. We find that the standard Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model gives remarkably accurate estimates for the velocity function of galaxies with circular velocities V #8819; 70 kms-1 and corresponding virial masses Mvir ≳ 5 × 1010M⊙, but it badly fails by overpredicting ~5 times the abundance of large dwarfs with velocities V = 30-40 kms-1. The warm dark matter (WDM) models cannot explain the data either, regardless of mass of WDM particle. Just as in previous observational studies, we find a shallow asymptotic slope dN/dlog V ∝ Vα, α ≈ -1 of the velocity function, which is inconsistent with the standard ΛCDMmodel that predicts the slope α=-3. Though reminiscent to the known overabundance of satellite problem, the overabundance of field galaxies is a much more difficult problem. For the standard CDM model to survive, in the 10 Mpc radius of the Milky Way there should be 1000 not yet detected galaxies with virial mass Mvir ≈ 1010M⊙, extremely low surface brightness and no detectable H I gas. So far none of this type of galaxies have been discovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major goal of this paper is to evaluate the ability of the physically based land surface model SWAP to reproduce heat and water exchange processes that occur in mid-latitude boreal grassland regions characterized by a clear seasonal course of hydrometeorological conditions, deep snow cover, seasonally frozen soil, as well as seasonally mobile and shallow water table depth. A unique set of hydrometeorological data measured over 18 years (1966?83) at the Usadievskiy catchment (grassland) situated in the central part of Valdai Hills (Russia) provides an opportunity to validate the model. To perform such validation in a proper way, SWAP is modified to take into account a shallow water table depth. The new model differs from its previous version mainly in the parameterization of water transfer in a soil column; besides that, it includes soil water?groundwater interaction. A brief description of the new version of SWAP and the results of its validation are presented. Simulations of snow density, snow depth, snow water equivalent, daily snow surface temperature, daily evaporation from snow cover, water yield of snow cover, water table depth, depth of soil freezing and thawing, soil water storage in two layers, daily surface and total runoff from the catchment, and monthly evaporation from the catchment are validated against observations on a long-term basis. The root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) of simulations of soil water storage in the layers of 0?50 cm and 0?100 cm are equal to 16 mm and 24 mm respectively; the relative RMSE of simulated annual total runoff is 16%; the RMSE of daily snow surface temperature is 2?9 ?C (the temperature varies from 0 to m46 ?C); the RMSE of maximum snow water equivalent (whose value averaged over 18 years is equal to 147 mm) is 32 mm. Analysis of the results of validation shows that the new version of the model SWAP reproduces the heat and water exchange processes occurring in mid-latitude boreal grassland reasonably well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]