Abstract
Abstract. Population growth and intense consumptive water uses are generating pressures on water resources in the southeast of Spain. Improving the knowledge of the climate change impacts on water cycle processes at the basin scale is a step to building adaptive capacity. In this work, regional climate model (RCM) ensembles are considered as an input to the hydrological model, for improving the reliability of hydroclimatic projections. To build the RCMs ensembles, the work focuses on probability density function (PDF)-based evaluation of the ability of RCMs to simulate of rainfall and temperature at the basin scale. To improve the spatial calibration of the continuous hydrological model used, an algorithm for remote sensing actual evapotranspiration (AET) retrieval was applied. From the results, a clear decrease in runoff is expected for 2050 in the headwater basin studied. The plausible future scenario of water shortage will produce negative impacts on the regional economy, where the main activity is irrigated agriculture.
Highlights
The Segura River basin (SRB), located in southeast Spain, is a drought-prone region with an irrigated agricultural water demand of 85% of the total water demand in the entire basin
In Spain it is a priority to increase the availability of regionalized scenarios of future climate change for performing risk analyses and impact assessment at the basin scale to build adaptive capacity
The evaluation of the uncertainties associated with greenhouse gases emissions (GHG) scenarios on hydrological projections will increase the reliability of the models
Summary
The Segura River basin (SRB), located in southeast Spain, is a drought-prone region with an irrigated agricultural water demand of 85% of the total water demand in the entire basin. For increasing the reliability of climate and hydrological projections at basin scale, ensemble methodologies of regional climate models (RCMs) are proposed. The objective is to improve the projections of components of the water cycle (such as runoff and actual evapotranspiration), considering the RCMs ensembles as input to a spatially distributed continuous hydrological model. For assessment of spatial distributions of daily AET from the satellite images, a graphical method proposed by Jiang and Islam (2001) based on the interpretation of the LST versus NDVI space was applied. This method applies the interpolation of Priestley and Taylor (1972), requiring few local data. The heat soil flux (G) is estimated by the approach proposed by Tanguy et al (2012)
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