Risk assessment in water resources planning under climate change at the Júcar River basin

Abstract

Climate change and its possible effects on water resources has become an increasingly near threat. Therefore, the study of these impacts in highly regulated systems and those suffering extreme events is essential to deal with them effectively. This study responds to the need for an effective method to integrate climate change projections into water planning and management analysis in order to guide the decision-making, taking into account drought risk assessments. Therefore, this document presents a general and adaptive methodology based on a modeling chain and correction processes, whose main outcomes are the impacts on future natural inflows, a drought risk indicator, and the simulation of future water storage in the water resources system (WRS). This method was applied in the Júcar River basin (JRB) due to its complexity and the multiannual drought events it suffers recurrently. The results showed a worrying decrease in future inflows, as well as a high probability (≈80 %) of being under 50 % of total capacity of the WRS in the near future. However, the uncertainty of the results was considerable from the mid-century onwards, indicating that the skill of climate projections needs to be improved in order to obtain more reliable results. Consequently, this paper also highlights the difficulties of developing this type of method, taking partial decisions to adapt them as far as possible to the basin in an attempt to obtain clearer conclusions on climate change impact assessments. Despite the high uncertainty, the results of the JRB call for action and the tool developed can be considered as a feasible and robust method to facilitate and support decision-making in complex basins for future water planning and management.