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The Nemunas River basin falls within the territories of five different countries - Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, Poland and Latvia. In general, the beginning of spring floods highly depends on rapid rise of air temperature, heavy precipitation and sudden snow melting in the analysed basin. In this paper, the conditions of formation and consequences of two catastrophic floods in 1958 and 1979 in the Nemunas River basin were studied regarding the hydrometeorological parameters (maximum snow water equivalent before the beginning of flood and precipitation amount during the flood) as well as runoff coefficients for each selected catastrophic flood. Differences between the main drivers and evolution of these floods were analysed. Spatial distribution of maximum snow water equivalent and precipitation, as well as runoff coefficient in different parts of the river basin, were identified as having the most significant impact on the formation of the studied catastrophic floods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the uncertainty ranges of high flows under climate change in Jinhua River basin, eastern China. Four representative concentration pathways (RCPs), three global climate models (GCMs), 10 downscaling parameter sets and three hydrologic models are applied to simulate future discharges. Changes of annual maximum discharges are assessed for the baseline period (1961-1990) and future period (2011-2040). The uncertainties of annual maximum discharges are calculated for each uncertainty source and compared with different combinations of them. The minimum temperature will probably increase all year round in the future period and maximum temperature would increase in most cases. The changes of precipitation showed different directions by different models and emission scenarios. The annual maximum discharges would decrease for all RCPs. The order of uncertainty ranges of high flows due to different uncertainty sources from high to low is: hydrologic models, GCMs, parameter sets in the downscaling method and emission scenarios. It must be noted that the small uncertainty contribution from different emission scenarios is due to the study period when the differences in increase of radiative forcing and greenhouse gas concentration are less obvious between different RCPs compared to the second half of the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]