Hydrology and Earth System Sciences www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net 1027-5606 1607-7938 14 4 2010 10.5194/hess-14-651-2010 http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/14/651/2010/ http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/14/651/2010/hess-14-651-2010.html http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/14/651/2010/hess-14-651-2010.pdf 651 665 2010-04-12 The hydrological response of the Ourthe catchment to climate change as modelled by the HBV model T. L. A. Driessen R. T. W. L. Hurkmans W. Terink P. Hazenberg P. J. J. F. Torfs R. Uijlenhoet Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands now at: Royal Haskoning, Nijmegen, The Netherlands now at: Bristol Glaciology Centre, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK The Meuse is an important river in Western Europe, which is almost exclusively rain-fed. Projected changes in precipitation characteristics due to climate change, therefore, are expected to have a considerable effect on the hydrological regime of the river Meuse. We focus on an important tributary of the Meuse, the Ourthe, measuring about 1600 km². The well-known hydrological model HBV is forced with three high-resolution (0.088°) regional climate scenarios, each based on one of three different IPCC CO₂ emission scenarios: A1B, A2 and B1. To represent the current climate, a reference model run at the same resolution is used. Prior to running the hydrological model, the biases in the climate model output are investigated and corrected for. Different approaches to correct the distributed climate model output using single-site observations are compared. Correcting the spatially averaged temperature and precipitation is found to give the best results, but still large differences exist between observations and simulations. The bias corrected data are then used to force HBV. 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