EGS XXVI General Assembly, Nice, France, March 2001

HSC4. Climate change impacts on water resources - can we contribute to engineering decisions:

Event Information

Climate change scenarios and their hydrological impact have been usually prepared as change of long-term means. Hydrologic responses as well as impact on water resources management of climatic changes are beset with uncertainties. Also for many engineering purposes changes in long-term mean have limited value as the interest particularly focus on changes in extreme conditions. The uncertainties do not only origin from an unknown global future climate but also they result from a number of unknown or partly known processes at different scale levels: global, European, national and river-basin. These processes include on the one hand socio-economic and agro-economic developments (such as population growth, industrial expansion, land use changes, and use of different crop types), resulting in changes in the conditions of the water systems and which will affect water demand. On the other hand, changes in climate conditions and the inherent hydrologic response may affect water availability. The objective of this section is to explore new approaches for designing physically plausible scenarios of several elements as time series with real temporal and spatial variability. These may contribute to decision making under uncertainty in water resources management.

Preliminary List of Solicited Speakers

Co-Sponsorship