Author(s): Salvador Navas; Manuel Del Jesus
Linked Author(s): Manuel del Jesus
Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: Because of climate change and global warming, precipitation and temperature regimes are expected change in many areas of the planet. This, in turn, could have major impacts on hydrology and water resource availability, resulting in alterations to surface runoff and aquifer recharge. The alteration of hydrological dynamics can reduce the minimum contributions that the reservoirs receive during periods of lower rainfall, which could have a serious impact on the operation of these reservoirs and the demands they may meet. For this reason, it is necessary to carry out climate change impact studies, to determine the possible evolution of the availability of water resources and to propose adaptive routes to mitigate the effects of climate change on reservoirs. The latest regional climate change studies carried out in Spain highlight the convenience of making all the information produced from these studies easy to use, which is why we have developed the SIMPCCe software tool (Navas and del Jesus, 2023) to complement the "Methodological guide for the estimation of minimum contributions to reservoirs in the context of climate change" (Navas et al., 2022). This tool allows preliminary analyses of inflows under climate change scenarios at any point of the Spanish water network to make robust assessments of the risks of climate change in the minimum inflows to reservoirs and the implications they could have for management. Thus, the tool that has been developed focuses on providing initial and quick assessments to evaluate if the adaptation to climate change in this sector can be achieved through improving the monitoring, operation and maintenance regime that already exists. The tool has been developed to enable reservoir managers to carry out simple assessments, enable the development of adaptation pathways and assist in decision making. Moreover, the tool is open source and can be adapted to be used in any other region of the planet.
Year: 2024