Climate services for water utilities: Lessons learnt from the case of the urban water supply to Valencia, Spain

Abstract

Climate change projections in many regions of the world show a critical reduction in precipitation and a significant rise in temperatures in the next decades. This change may affect the operation of water utilities in arid and semi-arid parts of the globe. The Mediterranean region is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change on water resources. In this paper, we reflect on the challenges that the water utility sector may experience during the upcoming decades to continue providing its essential service under the new climate scenario. Our reasoning is based on the lessons learned during the co-creation of a climate service with the water utility company of Valencia (Spain) within the framework of the EU ERA4CS project INNOVA. The joint vision of climate, water management researchers and water utility operators resulted in a multi-scale framework for evaluating the vulnerability of the water utility to climate change. The modelling framework couples water quantity and quality and their interaction in a chain of models. The proposed framework forced all parties to consider the issue of the temporal and spatial scales, and the importance of choosing and defining the boundaries of the problem. The analytical framework has three distinct elements: (1) a combination of climate projections; (2) hydrological and water resource management model of the river basin system; (3) reservoir management and water quality model. Two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 were considered in two timeframes for the analysis: the short term (2020–2040) and the medium term (2041–2069). The results show a significant reduction in water availability combined with an increased frequency and intensity of phytoplankton blooms and anoxia episodes. These changes result in the deterioration of the reservoir trophic state, shifting from ultraoligotrophic-oligotrophic (control period) to oligotrophic-mesotrophic (RCP 8.5). The example shows how the combination of models on different scales and the involvement of experts in the co-creation process can result in a customized climate service that provides valuable information to water utility operators that can be used to reduce the system’s vulnerability to climate change.