Almost entire area of Baltics belongs to the same climate type, Dfb (according to the Köppen climate classification), which is characterized by humid continental climates with warm (sometimes hot) summers and cold winters. In the last decades whether conditions on the western part of Lithuania and Latvia more characterized by temperate maritime climates - there has been a transition (and...
Climate change research has been relevant on a global scale for several decades. In climatology, they are shown by various climate-related meteorological phenomena, and in phenology, they are shown by changes in living nature, that is, the reaction of plants and animals to changed conditions. In the last 30 years, warm winters have been more frequent in Lithuania. The increase in the average...
The Curonian Lagoon is a shallow freshwater lagoon located southeast of the Baltic Sea. It is also the largest lagoon of the Baltic Sea, with an area of 1,584 km2 (of which 381.6 km2 belong to Lithuania). Due to its unique biodiversity, it is protected internationally and included in the Ramsar List, the Bonn Convention and the World Heritage List. However, like other bodies of water, this...
Ecological flow determines the water quantity needed to sustain river functions and healthy fluvial ecosystems. This measure is important when managing rivers and aiming to meet WFD requirements of good ecological status. In Lithuania, only the definition of environmental flow is defined and this value is quantified as either an 80% or 95% probability of low flow (Q30) during the warm period....
Surging global increase of water demand as well as decrease in water quality put forward planning of the forthcoming water resource availability in much longer term with climate change included in this algorithm. The climate is already changing, and changes are predicted to be more accelerating in the future (IPCC, 2022). In the latest UN report the projected changes in annual mean...
