The increase of water use in the Paracatu basin is leading to deep environmental problems and conflicts among the users. For a more efficient water resources management, the knowledge of the basin's hydrologic behavior is important, in the present and in the future, due to the strong climatic changes evidences in the planet. The aim of this work is to estimate the water availability variation trends in the Paracatu river basin, from the beginning until the end of this century, considering two contrasting climate change scenarios, the first one to take account of high CO2 emissions (A2) and the other one for low emissions (B2). To achieve this objective, the monthly precipitation downscaling was accomplished, using data from 2001 to 2099 simulated by the Hadley Centre´s global circulation model (HadCM3). The precipitations were used as data input in a precipitation-flow model, which made possible the estimate of the minimum discharges in 21 gauged stations distributed in the basin. For the A2 scenario, an increase trend was verified in the water availability in all of the stations from 2001 to 2099, varying from 31 to 131%. For the B2 scenario no significant trend was verified.
downscaling; water resources; minimum discharge
