The present work analyzes the climate change impacts on the runoff
regimes of mountainous catchments in the Swiss Alps having current
glaciation rates between 0 and 50 %. The hydrological response of
11 catchments to a given climate scenario is simulated through a
conceptual, reservoir-based precipitation-runoff transformation model
called GSM-SOCONT (Schaefli, 2005). For the glacierized catchments,
the glacier surface corresponding to this future scenario is updated
through a conceptual glacier surface evolution model. The analyzed
climate change scenarios were derived from 19 climate experiments
obtained within the EU research project PRUDENCE (Christensen et
al. 2002). They are the results of 9 state-to-the-art Regional Climate
Models (RCMs) driven by three coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation
Models (AOGCMs), respectively HadCM3/HadAM3H, ECHAM4/OPYC3 and ARPEGE.
The two first families of climate change scenarios correspond to
changes in seasonal temperatures and precipitations simulated for
the period 2070-2099 under the two green house gas emission scenarios
A2 and B2 defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(12 experiments are available for A2 and 7 for B2). From the 19 PRUDENCE
experiments 19 climate changes scenarios were additionally developed
for a transient period (2020-2049) corresponding in first approximation
to a global warming scenario of +1°C.