The fourth IPCC assessment report summarizes possible effects of the global climate change. For Europe an increasing variability of temperature and precipitation is expected. While the increasing temperature is projected almost uniformly for Europe, for precipitation the models indicate partly heterogeneous tendencies. In many regions the supply and availability of water is regulated and dependent by various water management systems. The supply guarantee and the security of these water management systems are quite sensitive to the regional water balance in the catchments. Therefore the possible impacts of the climate change can easily compromise our usual standards. For example in order to maintain current safetystandards possible future flood discharges become often a very central question. Water infrastructure and management systems are generally very cost-intensive and normally require a long planning horizon. Therefore uncertainty considerations and perspective approaches have an important function in the planning and operating of water infrastructure and management systems. To meet these requirements in times of climate change the analyses of measured historical data (normally 30 - 80 years) are not sufficient enough. Significant trends are only valid in the analyzed time period and extrapolations are exceedingly difficult. To deal with this challenge further and improved approaches with combined climate and hydrological modeling for scenario based projections become more and more popular. Regarding that adaptation measures in water infrastructure are in general very timeconsuming and cost intensive, qualified questions to the variability and uncertainty of model based results are important as well. The institute for Water and River Basin Management (IWG) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has a longtime experience and a wide research expertise in the Ruhr catchment and these questions. The Ruhr is a right tributary of the Rhine located in North Rhine-Westphalia. The catchment size is 4485 km~2 and has a mainly sub-mountainous character and wide parts are covered with forest. The headwaters of the Ruhr are situated in the northwest range of the Rothaargebirge in the Hochsauerland region. The maximum heights in the catchment are up to 850 m. In the lower and outlet part of the Ruhr basin are extensive urban and industrial areas located. To serve the varied needs in the Ruhr catchment (drinking/industrial water and flood protection) there is a complex water supply and management system with six larger reservoirs (capacity 462,9 Millionen m~3) and water export in operation.
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