Dynamical versus statistical downscaling for the generation of regional climate change scenarios at a Western Mediterranean basin: the Jucar River District

[EN] Current climate change (CC) predictions for the Western Mediterranean show a significant increase in temperature, and a decrease in precipitations, with great variability depending on general circulation models (GCM) and downscaling approaches. This paper analyses how dynamic downscaling improves statistically based CC scenarios. The study area was the Jucar River Basin (JB), with results from ECHAM5 GCM, and a close time frame of 2010-2040 appropriated for decision-making. The dynamic downscaling was performed with the regional climate model (RCM) RegCM3. It was applied to a coarse grid over the Iberian Peninsula, and then to a finer grid over the JB. The RCM was customized to reproduce Western Mediterranean climatic conditions using the convective precipitation scheme of Grell; the non-convective scheme was customized by changing the default RHmin and C-ptt parameters to reproduce precipitations originated by larger-scale atmospheric circulations. The RCM results, compared to current official Spanish Agency of Meteorology (AEMET) scenarios-statistically based-reproduce much better historical data (used to verify scenarios generation). They foresee a 21.0% precipitation decrease for 2010-2040, compared to previous ECHAM4 predictions with statistical downscaling (-6.64%). The most significant reductions are in February, September and October. Average estimated temperature increase is 0.75 degrees C, with high increments in July (+3.05 degrees C) and August (+1.89 degrees C).Chirivella Osma, V.; Capilla Romá, JE.; Pérez-Martín, MÁ. (2016). Dynamical versus statistical downscaling for the generation of regional climate change scenarios at a Western Mediterranean basin: the Jucar River District. Journal of Water and Climate Change. 7(2):379-392. doi:10.2166/wcc.2015.207S3793927

Combined use of relative drought indices to analyze climate change impact on meteorological and hydrological droughts in a Mediterranean basin

[EN] Standardized drought indices have been traditionally used to identify and assess droughts because of their simplicity and flexibility to compare the departure from normal conditions across regions at different timescales. Nevertheless, the statistical foundation of these indices assumes stationarity for certain aspects of the climatic variables, which could no longer be valid under climate change. This contribution provides a framework to analyze the impact of climate change on meteorological and hydrological droughts, considering shifts in precipitation and temperature, adapted to a Mediterranean basin. For this purpose, droughts are characterized through a combination of relative standardized indices: Standardized Precipitation Index (rSPI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (rSPEI) and a Standardized Flow Index (rSFI). The uncertainty and the stationarity of the distribution parameters used to compute the drought indices are assessed by bootstrapping resampling techniques and overlapping coefficients. For the application of the approach to a semiarid Mediterranean basin (Jucar River Basin), the Thornthwaite scheme was modified to improve the representation of the intra-annual variation of the potential evapotranspiration and low flow simulation in hydrological modelling was improved for a better characterization of hydrological droughts. Results for the Jucar basin show a general increase in the intensity and magnitude of both meteorological and hydrological droughts under climate change scenarios, due to the combined effects of rainfall reduction and evapotranspiration increase. Although the indicators show similar values for the historical period, under climate change scenarios the rSPI could underestimate the severity of meteorological droughts by ignoring the role of temperature. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This study has been supported by the IMPADAPT project (CGL2013-48424-C2-1-R) with Spanish MINECO (Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad) and European FEDER funds. Patricia Marcos-Garcia is also supported by a FPI grant from the PhD Training Program (BES-2014-070490) of the former MINECO. The authors thank AEMET (Spanish Meteorological Office) and University of Cantabria for the data provided for this work (dataset Spain02).Marcos-García, P.; Lopez-Nicolas, A.; Pulido-Velazquez, M. (2017). Combined use of relative drought indices to analyze climate change impact on meteorological and hydrological droughts in a Mediterranean basin. Journal of Hydrology. 554:292-305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.09.028S29230555

Assessing the effectiveness of Multi-Sector Partnerships to manage droughts: The case of the Jucar river basin

[EN] South-east Spain is a drought prone area, characterized by climate variability and water scarcity. The Jucar River Basin, located in Eastern Spain, has suffered many historical droughts with significant socio-economic impacts. For nearly a hundred years, the institutional and non-institutional strategies to cope with droughts have been successful through the development of institutions and partnerships for drought management including multiple actors. In this paper, we show how the creation and institutionalisation of Multi-Sector Partnerships (MSPs) has supported the development of an efficient drought management. Furthermore, we analyze the performance of one of the suggested instruments by the partnership related to drought management in the basin. Two methodologies are used for these purposes. On one hand, the Capital Approach Framework to analyze the effectiveness of the governance processes in a particular partnership (Permanent Drought Commission), which aims to highlight the governance strength and weakness of the MSP for enhancing drought management in the Jucar River Basin. Through a dynamic analysis of the changes that the partnership has undergone over time to successfully deal with droughts, its effectiveness on drought management is demonstrated. On the other hand, an econometric approach is used to analyze the economic efficiency of the emergency drought wells as one of the key drought mitigation measures suggested by the Permanent Drought Commission and implemented. The results demonstrate the potential and efficiency of applying drought wells as mitigation measures (significant reduction of economic losses, around 50 M(sic) during the drought period, 2005-2008).We acknowledge the project ENHANCE (Grant Agreement number 308438) for the financial support to this research. As well as, we thank the Jucar River Basin stakeholders for providing the help to get data for the analysis. The data used are listed in the references, tables, and Appendix A.Carmona, M.; Mañez, M.; Andreu Álvarez, J.; Pulido-Velazquez, M.; Haro Monteagudo, D.; Lopez-Nicolas, A.; Cremades, R. (2017). Assessing the effectiveness of Multi-Sector Partnerships to manage droughts: The case of the Jucar river basin. Earth's Future. 5(7):750-770. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017EF000545S7507705

Combining literature-based and data-driven fuzzy models to predict brown trout (salmo trutta l.) spawning habitat degradation induced by climate change

[EN] A fuzzy rule-based system combining empirical data on hydraulic preferences and literature information on temperature requirements was used to foresee the brown trout (Salmo trutta L.) spawning habitat degradation induced by climate change. The climatic scenarios for the Cabriel River (Eastern Iberian Peninsula) corresponded to two Representative Concentration Pathways (4.5 and 8.5) for the short (2011¿2040) and mid (2041¿2070) term horizons. The hydraulic and hydrologic modelling were undertaken with process-based numerical models (i.e., River2D© and HBV-light) while the water temperature was modelled by assembling the predictions of three machine learning techniques (M5, Multi-Adaptive Regression Splines and Support Vector Regression). The predicted rise in the water temperature will not be compensated by the more benign lower flows. Consequently, the suitable spawning habitat will be reduced between 15.4¿48.7%. The entire population shall suffer the effects of climate change and will probably be extirpated from the downstream segments of the river.The study has been partially funded by the IMPADAPT project (CGL2013-48424-C2-1-R) with Spanish MINECO (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad) and FEDER funds and by the Confederación Hidrográfica del Júcar (Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment). The authors thank AEMET and UC for the data provided for this work (dataset Spain02). Finally, we are grateful to the colleagues who worked in the field and in preliminary data analyses; especially Marcello Minervini (funded by the EU programme of Erasmus Traineeships, at the Dept. of Hydraulic Engineering and Environment, Universitat Politècnica de València).Muñoz Mas, R.; Marcos-García, P.; Lopez-Nicolas, A.; Martínez-García, F.; Pulido-Velazquez, M.; Martinez-Capel, F. (2018). Combining literature-based and data-driven fuzzy models to predict brown trout (salmo trutta l.) spawning habitat degradation induced by climate change. Ecological Modelling. 386:98-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2018.08.012S9811438

El registre dels titulars de premsa : els enunciats sense verb

El registre escrit dels mitjans de comunicació presenta unes característiques particulars que el diferencien de la llengua estàndard en alguns aspectes. Amb aquest treball ens centrarem en les característiques específiques dels titulars dels diaris i estudiarem els fenòmens d'el·lipsi verbal, des d'un punt de vista gramatical, en aquest àmbit.El registro escrito de los medios de comunicación presenta unas características particulares que lo diferencian de la lengua estándar en algunos aspectos. Con este trabajo nos centraremos en las características específicas de los titulares de los periódicos y estudiaremos los fenómenos de elipsis verbal, desde un punto de vista gramatical, en este ámbito.The language register in the media has particular features that differentiate it from the standard language in some aspects. In this paper we focus on the specific characteristics of the headlines and study the phenomena of verbal ellipsis, from a grammatical point of view

Modelling Regional Impacts of Climate Change on Water Resources: the Jucar Basin, Spain

This paper analyses all current available simulated climate scenarios, proposed by the Spanish Agency of Meteorology (AEMET), for the period 2010-2040 on the geographic area covered by the Jucar River Basin District (JB), located in eastern Spain. This is done through the validation of these scenarios using historical records, and by assessing the impact on water resources for the next 30 years by means of a hydrological model. By taking the period 1960-90 as control period, a careful comparison of its historical records against AEMET scenarios is performed. Although temperature records are properly honoured, precipitations are widely underestimated in a range going from 8 % to 29 %. This wide variability range observed in the control period is also found in precipitation scenarios for 2010-40. The impact on water resources shows a great degree of dispersion, ranging from -13.45 to 18.1% with a mean value of -2.13%.Chirivella Osma, V.; Capilla Romá, JE.; Pérez-Martín, MÁ. (2015). Modelling Regional Impacts of Climate Change on Water Resources: the Jucar Basin, Spain. Hydrological Sciences Journal. 60(1):30-49. doi:10.1080/02626667.2013.866711S304960