Modeling the Impact of Climate Change on the Hydrology of Eurotas Basin

Abstract

Climate change (CC) has altered the hydrological cycle, mainly due to changes in temperature and precipitation, leading indirectly to regional water shortage issues, especially in the Mediterranean areas. The objective of this work was the investigation of the CC impact on water resources. Hydrological simulations under several CC scenarios were performed for the Vivari subbasin, located in the Eurotas river basin, Peloponnese, Greece. The analysis was carried out by applying the Thomas ABCD water balance model on a monthly basis, initially for the period between 2005 and 2009, to calibrate the model using available runoff measurements. Then, CC scenarios were incorporated into the model and the results are presented indicatively for three periods: a historic period (1970–2000), which was used as the reference period for comparisons; and two future periods: 2031–2060 and 2061–2090. Simulations for the three periods were based on freely available monthly precipitation and temperature timeseries, which were provided by the Data Extraction Application for Regional Climate (DEAR-Clima) web application tool. Results regarding average values, trends, and other statistics for monthly runoff are provided for the three periods and for several scenarios.

Keywords

• climate change
• ABCD water balance model
• water shortage
• runoff
• Eurotas