Hydroclimate changes over Sweden in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: a millennium perspective

Climate change poses additional risks for natural and human systems including the hydrological cycle, leading to altered temporal and spatial variation of hydroclimatic conditions. This work assessed the current understanding of the dryness and wetness conditions in Sweden over the last two millenniums based on proxy and instrumental data, as well as climate model simulations and projections until the end of the twenty-first century. The assessment represents a summary of the existing literature concerning analysis of four selected indices for dry/wet conditions relating to precipitation, potential evapotranspiration (PET), and soil moisture (SPEI, PDSI [including scPDSI], SPI, and AI). SPEI considers both precipitation and PET and can show hydroclimatic conditions at different time scales. Therefore, it was chosen to summarize the past and future changes. A focus is put on dry conditions, as drought has strong influences on groundwater which is an important freshwater resource for Sweden. The millennium historical perspective reveals that the current climate is relatively wet and the future would become even wetter as a general wetting trend started some 120 years ago. However, there have been and will be large variations of both dry and wet conditions on short time scales, especially on decadal and interannual time scales. Further, the changes since the 1950s show a regional pattern with most significant wetting in the north, a slightly overall wetting in the south but a drying in central-eastern part including the island of Gotland since 1981. This pattern is broadly consistent with climate model projections for the future.

Automated summary

This study evaluated the dryness and wetness conditions in Sweden over the last two millenniums, finding that the current climate is relatively wet and is projected to become even wetter in the future. However, there will still be large variations in both dry and wet conditions on short time scales.