摘要：Climate variability and temporal trends in the period 1990–2010 around the Valkea- Kotinen environmental monitoring area were compared both with earlier observations and with climate model projections for the 2040s and 2080s. The focus was on climatic variables relevant for aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, i.e., air temperature, precipitation, snow depth, lake-ice cover, wind speed and solar radiation. Changes in these variables were categorized depending on how rapidly they are likely to emerge from the background of recently-experienced inter-annual variability. The statistically significant increases in annual and spring mean temperatures of about 0.4 °C per decade, observed during the period 1964–2011, are projected to continue in the future, accompanied by corresponding changes in snow depth and lake-ice duration. Based on the multi-model mean estimates, increases in annual mean precipitation and decreases in winter solar radiation would become statistically significant by the 2040s. In addition to the recorded inter-annual variability, inter-model uncertainty intervals were considered.
