Change of Air Temperature Daily Range in the Global Warming Context

Climate change due to enhanced greenhouse effect will probably result in several interesting changes in global and regional climate. One of them is the global warm- ing. Because of changed energetic balance daily regime it seems that the daily minimum temperatures will increase more than the daily maximum ones. On the other hand, daily range of air temperature is influenced by several other fac- tors (atmospheric circulation, solar radiation, cloudiness, air humidity, soil moisture, upwind and lee effects etc.). The paper contains a sample from the analysis of past conditions in change of air temperature daily range at several Slovak stations in 1961-2010 and possible change in daily air temperature range up to the time frame of the year 2100 using climate change scenarios by four climatic models (global CGCM3.1 and ECHAM5, regional KNMI and MPI) and three emission scenarios (IPCC SRES A2. B1 and A1B). The analysis results showed that the precipitation and air humidity regime change will modify the air temperature daily range probably comparably as the increase in daily mean temperature. Change in daily temperature range is probably connected also with inter-sequential variability of mean and extreme daily temperatures. Change of those climatic variables regime can cause also some negative socio-economic and environmental impacts.