Exploring the effects of climate change on the water balance of a continuously moving deep-seated landslide

Abstract

Impacts of expected climate change on the water balance in mountain regions may affect the activity of hydro-meteorologically driven deep-seated landslides. In the present study, an extended empirical monthly water balance model is used for reproducing the current and future hydro-meteorological forcing of a continuously moving deep-seated earth slide in Vögelsberg, Tyrol (Austria). The model extension accounts for effects of land cover and soil properties and relies on time series of air temperature and precipitation as data input. Future projections of the water balance are computed until the end of the twenty-first century exploiting a bias-corrected subset of climate simulations under the RCP8.5 concentration scenario, providing a measure of uncertainty related to the long-term projections. Particular attention is paid to the agreement/disagreement of the projections based on the selected climate simulations. The results indicate that a relevant proxy for the landslide’s varying velocity (subsurface runoff) is generally expected to decrease under future climate conditions. As a consequence, it appears likely that the Vögelsberg landslide may accelerate less frequently considering climate change projections. However, the variability within the considered climate simulations still prevents results in full agreement, even under the ‘most severe’ scenario RCP8.5.