Warming Vistula River – the effects of climate and local conditions on water temperature in one of the largest rivers in Europe

Abstract

The paper evaluates changes in the water temperature of the Vistula River – one of the longest rivers in Europe. Mean monthly and annual water temperatures from the period 1971–2017 for 11 stations along the entire length of the river revealed the increasing trends. The mean increase in water temperature in the analysed multi-annual period was 0.31 °C dec–1. In the majority of analysed stations, the key factor determining changes in the water temperature of the river was air temperature. The observed water warming in the Vistula River should be considered an exceptionally unfavourable situation in the context of importance of water temperature for a number of processes and phenomena occurring in river ecosystems. Given the scale of changes, fast measures should be undertaken to slow down the warming.

Impact of climate change and human factors on the water regime of the Danube Delta

“…In addition, fresh water temperature has minimum 0C, which air temperature does not have. Similar results showing an excess of water temperature over air temperature were obtained in many other works (Webb and Nobilis, 2007;Pekarova et al, 2008;Vyshnevskyi, Shevchuk, 2021;Ptak et al, 2022), but the excess in the Danube Delta is larger than in many other rivers. Importantly, water temperatures, like air temperatures, have risen essentially in recent decades.…”

“…The conclusion about the increase in water temperature is contained in many other works (Webb and Nobilis, 2007;Basarin et al, 2016;Marszelewski and Pius, 2016;Czernecki and Ptak, 2018;Vyshnevskyi and Shevchuk, 2021;Ptak et al, 2022;Wrzesiński and Graf, 2022), but the excess of water temperature increas over air temperature increase is somewhat unusal. It can be assumed that the found feature on the Danube Delta is caused by the decrease of the river flow.…”

Thermal regime of the Vistula River mouth and the Gdańsk Bay

“…In particular, there are studies devoted to the thermal regime of the Vistula River. It has been identified that water temperature in the river has increased significantly in recent decades as the result of climate change (Graf & Wrzesiński, 2020;Ptak et al, 2020;Ptak et al, 2022). The same results were obtained for many European rivers and lakes (Webb et al, 2007;Adrian et al, 2009;Marszelewski & Pius, 2016;Ptak et al, 2016;Woolway et al, 2017;Lieberherr et al, 2018;Vyshnevskyi & Shevchuk, 2021;Wrzesiński & Graf, 2022;Vyshnevskyi & Shevchuk, 2023).…”

Possibilities of River Water Temperature Reconstruction Using Statistical Models in the Context of Long-Term Thermal Regime Changes Assessment

“…In order to remove the autocorrelation from the data series, a trend-free prewhitening procedure was used [39]. The adopted procedure is the most frequently used when analysing hydrological data [40,41]. This is because the method based on the Mann-Kendall and Sen test is less sensitive to extreme values compared to the linear regression method and Student's t-test.…”