No abstract

No abstract

García-Arostegui, J.; Molina González, JL.; Pulido-Velazquez, M. (2015). Assessment of future groundwater recharge in semi-arid regions under climate change scenarios (Serral-Salinas aquifer, SE Spain). Could increased rainfall variability increase the recharge rate?. Hydrological Processes. 29 (6) AbstractThe projected impact of climate change on groundwater recharge is a challenge in hydrogeological research because substantial doubts still remain, particularly in arid and semiarid zones. We present a methodology to generate future groundwater recharge scenarios using available information about regional climate change projections developed in European Projects.It involves an analysis of Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations and a proposal for ensemble models to assess the impacts of climate change. Future rainfall and temperature series are generated by modifying the mean and standard deviation of the historical series in accordance with estimates of their change provoked by climate change. Future recharge series will be obtained by simulating these new series within a continuous balance model of the aquifer. The proposed method is applied to the Serral-Salinas Aquifer, located in a semi-arid zone of SE Spain. The results show important differences depending on the RCM used. Differences are also observed between the series generated by imposing only the changes in means or also in standarddeviations. An increase in rainfall variability, as expected under future scenarios, could increase recharge rates for a given mean rainfall because the number of extreme events increases., For some RCMs, the simulations predict total recharge increases over the historical values, even though climate change would produce a reduction in the mean rainfall and an increased mean temperature A method based on a multi-objective analysis is proposed to provide ensemble predictions which give more value to the information obtained from the best calibrated models.The ensemble of predictions estimates a reduction in mean annual recharge of 14% for the scenario A2 and 58% for the scenario A1B. Lower values of future recharge are obtained if only the change in the mean is imposed.

Streamflow data are of prime importance to water-resources planning and management, and the accuracy of their estimation is very important for decision making. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models have been evaluated and compared to find a method to improve streamflow estimation. For a more complete evaluation, the accuracy and ability of these streamflow estimation models was also established separately based on their performance during different periods of flows using regional flow duration curves (FDCs). Specifically, the FDCs were divided into five sectors: very low, low, medium, high and very high flow. This segmentation of flow allows analysis of the model performance for every important discharge event precisely. In this study, the models were applied in two catchments in Peninsular Spain with contrasting climatic conditions: Atlantic and Mediterranean climates. The results indicate that SWAT and ANNs were generally good tools in daily streamflow modelling. However, SWAT was found to be more successful in relation to better simulation of lower flows, while ANNs were superior at estimating higher flows in all cases.

17Bayesian Networks (BNs) are powerful tools for assessing and predicting consequences of water 38

No abstract

No abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate different methods to generate future potential climatic scenarios at monthly scale considering meteorological droughts. We assume that more reliable scenarios would be generated by using regional climatic models (RCMs) and statistical correction techniques that produce better approximations to the historical basic and drought statistics. A multi-objective analysis is proposed to identify the inferior approaches. Different ensembles (equifeasible and non-equifeasible) solutions are analysed, identifying their pros and cons. A sensitivity analysis of the method to spatial scale is also performed. The proposed methodology is applied in an alpine basin, the Alto Genil (southern Spain). The method requires historical climatic information and simulations provided by multiple RCMs (9 RCMs are considered in the proposed application) for a future period, assuming a potential emission scenario. We generate future series by applying two conceptual approaches, bias correction and delta change, using five statistical transformation techniques for each. The application shows that the method allows improvement of the definition of local climate scenarios from the RCM simulation considering drought statistics. The sensitivity of the results to the applied approach is analysed.