The relative impact of climate change and urban expansion on peak flows: a case study in central Belgium

Poelmans, Lien; Rompaey, Anton Van; Ntegeka, Victor; Willems, Patrick

doi:10.1002/hyp.8047

Cited by 60 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Lastly, the increased run-off in cities leads to an increased number and more intense pluvial floods. For instance, Poelmans et al (2011) calculated that the flood frequency and flood extent by the increased number of extreme precipitation (as presented by 'wet future climate scenarios' minus 'dry future climate scenarios') and the increased urban expansion will amplify each other for the Molenbeek River catchment in Belgium. This is in agreement with (Hamdi et al, 2011) who found that the effect of historical urbanisation of Brussels and the effect of a future increased-precipitation scenario exacerbate each other (see also Rosenzweig et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of impervious water-storage parametrization on urban climate modelling

et al. 2015

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a b s t r a c tIn order to improve the representation of the water balance in urban land-surface models, we present a new impervious waterstorage parametrization that assumes a distribution of water reservoirs. It has been implemented in TERRA-URB, a new urban parametrization for COSMO-CLM's standard land-surface module TERRA-ML. The water-storage capacity and the maximal wet surface fraction of the urban impervious land cover consisting of streets and buildings are estimated for Toulouse centre by matching the modelled and observed evapotranspiration (ET) rates. They amount to 1.31 ± 0.20 kg m À2 and 12 AE 4%, respectively. The model successfully reproduces the timespan and magnitude of increased ET for both urban observations campaigns CAPITOUL and BUBBLE. Our sensitivity study reveals that water-storage parametrization largely affects the performance of modelled ET rates. Hereby, the simulation employing the new water-storage parametrization is improved compared to arbitrary or existing water-storage parametrizations. The ET, surface sensible heat exchange and upwelling infra-red radiation are all affected until 12 day-time hours after rainfall on average. The modelled annual-mean ET during the CAP-ITOUL campaign from the urban land in Toulouse is an order of magnitude lower than that observed for the natural surroundings.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of impervious water-storage parametrization on urban climate modelling

et al. 2015

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“…This triggered the start of unrestrained and disparate building activities. Between 1976 and 2000, the built up area in some regions tripled and more than 20% of built up land in Flanders is situated in flood‐prone zones (Poelmans and Van Rompaey, ; Poelmans et al, ). A similar situation can be found in the more densely populated areas of Wallonia.…”

Section: Explaining Governance Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Belgian flood risk governance: explaining the dynamics within a fragmented governance arrangement

Mees

Crabbé

Suykens

2017

J Flood Risk Management

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Despite some inertia, flood risk governance in Belgium has been fairly dynamic between 1995 and 2015. In this paper, change and stability during this period are described and explained in the four dimensions of the Policy Arrangement Approach: actors, discourses, rules, and resources. The analysis is based on 72 semi‐structured stakeholder interviews and legal document analysis. Belgian flood risk governance is characterised by a high level of fragmentation. Our analysis found that this can form a barrier to change, but at the same time it creates multiple entry points for policy innovation and thereby increases the dynamics within the governance arrangement.

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“…As a consequence, several studies have shown the impacts of future climate change on freshwater budgets [5,[33][34][35][36], streamflow [2,6,7,37,38], and hydrological extremes [6,[8][9][10]39,40] at large-scale continental watersheds. In small-scale Pacific island watersheds, such as in Hawaii, a few studies [3,4,41] have also assessed the impact of climate change on water budgets but focused at monthly and yearly mean values.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Climate Change on Daily Streamflow and Its Extreme Values in Pacific Island Watersheds

2018

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Abstract:The integration of hydrology and climate is important for understanding the present and future impact of climate on streamflow, which may cause frequent flooding, droughts, and shortage of water supply. In view of this, we assessed the impact of climate change on daily streamflow duration curves as well as extreme peak and low flow values. The objectives were to assess how climate change impacts watershed-wide streamflow and its extreme values and to provide an overview of the impacts of different climate change scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5) on streamflow and hydrological extremes when compared with the baseline values. We used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model for daily streamflow and its extreme value modeling of two watersheds located on the Island of Oahu (Hawaii). Following successful calibration and validation of SWAT at three USGS flow gauging stations, we simulated the impact of climate change by the 2050s (2041-2070) and the 2080s (2071-2100). We used climate change perturbation factors and applied the factors to the historical time series data of 1980-2014. SWAT adequately reproduced observed daily streamflow with Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) values of greater than 0.5 and bracketed >80% of observed streamflow data at 95% model prediction uncertainty at all flow gauging stations, indicating the applicability of the model for future daily streamflow prediction. We found that while the considered climate change scenarios generally show considerable negative impacts on daily streamflow and its extreme values, the extreme peak flows are expected to increase by as much as 22% especially under the RCP 8.5 scenario. However, a consistent decrease in extreme low flows by as much as 60% compared to the baseline values is projected. Larger negative changes of low flows are expected in the upstream part of the watersheds where higher groundwater contributions are expected. Consequently, severe problems, such as frequent hydrological droughts (groundwater scarcity), reduction in agricultural crop productivity, and increase in drinking water demand, are significantly expected on Oahu. Furthermore, the extreme values are more sensitive to rainfall change in comparison to temperature and solar radiation changes. Overall, findings generally indicated that climate change impacts will be amplified by the end of this century and may cause earlier occurrence of hydrological droughts when compared to the current hydrological regime, suggesting water resources managers, ecosystem conservationists, and ecologists to implement mitigation measures to climate change in Hawaii and similar Islands.

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The relative impact of climate change and urban expansion on peak flows: a case study in central Belgium

Cited by 60 publications

References 26 publications

The impact of impervious water-storage parametrization on urban climate modelling

The impact of impervious water-storage parametrization on urban climate modelling

Belgian flood risk governance: explaining the dynamics within a fragmented governance arrangement

Impact of Climate Change on Daily Streamflow and Its Extreme Values in Pacific Island Watersheds

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