Climate Change in the Lake Skadar/Shkodra Region

IPCC Assessment Reports on Climate Change indicate that in the twenty-first century, climate change will be accompanied by an increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme natural phenomena such as extreme atmospheric precipitation or droughts, extremely high or low air temperatures, etc. In this chapter, we briefly review general characteristics of climate and climate change in the coastal region of Montenegro. Then, using data from ERA-20C, which is the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) first atmospheric reanalysis of the twentieth century from 1900 till 2010, we are analyzing linear trends and variability of the characteristics of extreme climate events of near-surface air temperature, wind speed, sea-level pressure, snow depth, cloud cover, and atmospheric precipitation for 1950–2010 in the region of Lake Skadar/Shkodra. For the first time, we determined interannual variability of frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme meteorological events in this region, which is a source of valuable information for better understanding the present and future Lake Skadar/Shkodra environment and ecosystem characteristics.