Hydrological impacts of moderate and high-end climate change across European river basins

Anastasia Lobanova,Stefan Liersch,Joao Pedro Nunes,Iulii Didovets,Judith Stagl,Shaochun Huang,Hagen Koch,María Del Rocío Rivas López,Cathrine Fox Maule,Fred Hattermann,Valentina Krysanova

doi:10.1016/j.ejrh.2018.05.003

Abstract

Study regionTo provide a picture of hydrological impact of climate change across different climatic zones in Europe, this study considers eight river basins: Tagus in Iberian Peninsula; Emån and Lule in Scandinavia; Rhine, Danube and Teteriv in Central and Eastern Europe; Tay on the island of Great Britain and Northern Dvina in North-Eastern Europe. Study focusIn this study the assessment of the impacts of moderate and high-end climate change scenarios on the hydrological patterns in European basins was conducted. To assess the projected changes, the process-based eco-hydrological model SWIM (Soil and Water Integrated Model) was set up, calibrated and validated for the basins. The SWIM was driven by the bias-corrected climate projections obtained from the coupled simulations of the Global Circulation Models and Regional Climate Models. New hydrological insights for the regionThe results show robust decreasing trends in water availability in the most southern river basin (Tagus), an overall increase in discharge in the most northern river basin (Lule), increase in the winter discharge and shift in seasonality in Northern and Central European catchments. The impacts of the high-end climate change scenario RCP 8.5 continue to develop until the end of the century, while those of the moderate climate change scenario RCP 4.5 level-off after the mid-century. The results of this study also confirm trends, found previously with mostly global scale models.

Highlights

Climate change is one of the world’s most important global challenges, which will have global as well as regional consequences, and is expected to affect all aspects of modern humanity (IPCC WGII, 2014)
We provide an assessment and intercomparison of the moderate and high-end climate change impacts on river discharge across different regions in Europe, focused on eight river basins: Tagus in Iberian Peninsula; Emån and Lule in Scandinavia, Rhine in Central Europe, Danube and Teteriv in Central and Eastern Europe, Tay on the island of Great Britain, and Northern Dvina in North-Eastern Europe
When looking at the impacts, the South-North gradient can be clearly detected: the results of this study indicate an increase in discharge in the considered Scandinavian and Northern European basins, as well as a strong decrease in the Tagus River basin located in the Iberian Peninsula

Summary

Introduction

Climate change is one of the world’s most important global challenges, which will have global as well as regional consequences, and is expected to affect all aspects of modern humanity (IPCC WGII, 2014). The Paris Agreement entered in force at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) in 2015 indicated a great success of more than 20 years of negotiations, and imposed a significant challenge to the contemporary society by setting the goal of limiting the global warming to 2 °C, while aspiring to 1.5 °C (Rogelj et al, 2016; Schellnhuber et al, 2016) This goal is ambitious as the trajectories of the greenhouse gases emissions are pointing to the high-end climate change scenarios above the agreed threshold, and this development still remains probable, if global actions are not taken urgently. Hydrological modelling is a primary tool to obtain projections on how climate change would impact water resources and hydrological patterns of river basins

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