Quantifying the impact of model inaccuracy in climate change impact assessment studies using an agro-hydrological model

Numerical simulation models are frequently applied to assess the impact of climate change on hydrology and agriculture. A common hypothesis is that unavoidable model errors are reflected in the reference situation as well as in the climate change situation so that by comparing reference to scenario model errors will level out. For a polder in The Netherlands an innovative procedure has been introduced, referred to as the Model-Scenario-Ratio (MSR), to express model inaccuracy on climate change impact assessment studies based on simulation models comparing a reference situation to a climate change situation. The SWAP (Soil Water Atmosphere Plant) model was used for the case study and the reference situation was compared to two climate change scenarios. MSR values close to 1, indicating that impact assessment is mainly a function of the scenario itself rather than of the quality of the model, were found for most indicators evaluated. A climate change scenario with enhanced drought conditions and indicators based on threshold values showed lower MSR values, indicating that model accuracy is an important component of the climate change impact assessment. It was concluded that the MSR approach can be applied easily and will lead to more robust impact assessment analyses

On the propagation of drought : how climate and catchment characteristics influence hydrological drought development and recovery

Drought is a severe natural disaster resulting in high economic loss and huge ecological and societal impacts. In this thesis drought is defined as a period of below-normal water availability in precipitation (meteorological drought), soil moisture (soil moisture drought), or groundwater and discharge (hydrological drought), caused by natural variability in climate. Drought propagation is the change of the drought signal as it moves from anomalous meteorological conditions to a hydrological drought through the terrestrial part of the hydrological cycle. The objective of this PhD research is to investigate the processes underlying drought propagation and their relation with climate and catchment characteristics, both on the catchment scale and on the global scale. The catchment-scale studies are based on five headwater catchments in Europe with contrasting climate and catchment characteristics. In one of these case study areas, anthropogenic influence on the water system was significant, resulting in severe water scarcity. As I only study natural processes in this thesis, there was a need to separate drought (as defined in this thesis) from human-induced water scarcity in this case study area. I proposed an observation-modelling framework that consists of a hydrological model to simulate the ‘naturalised’ situation and an anomaly analysis method to quantify drought and water scarcity events. Both the time series and the anomaly characteristics of the ‘disturbed’ and ‘naturalised’ situation were compared to quantify human and natural influences on the hydrological system. After simulation of hydrometeorological variables of all case study areas with a conceptual hydrological model and drought identification with the variable threshold level method, time series and characteristics of drought events were analysed. I classified the drought events into six hydrological drought types that are the result of the interplay of temperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration and storage in different seasons. The most common hydrological drought type develops as a result of a rainfall deficit. However, in the development of the most severe hydrological drought events temperature and storage-related processes play an important role, for example through a lack of recovery of the drought. As I aimed to investigate drought propagation also on larger scales, I tested an ensemble mean of a number of large-scale models (both land-surface models and global hydrological models) on their ability to reproduce the drought propagation processes found in the case study areas. The large-scale models did simulate general aspects of drought propagation (e.g. fewer and longer drought events in discharge than in precipitation), but the above-mentioned effects of temperature and storage-related processes were only partly reproduced. In the large-scale model ensemble, daily runoff reacted almost immediately to changes in precipitation, resulting in important deficiencies in drought simulation in cold and semi-arid climates and regions with large storage. For the time being, this limits the use of large-scale models for the study of processes underlying drought propagation on a global scale. Consequently, I used a synthetic conceptual hydrological model to study drought propagation on the global scale. I focused on climate control by isolating forcing effects from effects of catchment properties. The drought characteristics (duration and deficit combined) of both soil moisture and subsurface discharge exhibited strongly non-linear patterns in seasonal climates. The non-linear effects in soil moisture drought were caused by the fact that the development of soil moisture droughts in warm seasonal climates is limited by the wilting point. Hydrological droughts in both warm and cold seasonal climates showed a strong increase of deficit with duration due to a lack of recovery in the dry season or snow season, respectively. This effect was strongest in cold seasonal climates, which indicates that for the development and recovery of within-year hydrological drought temperature is an important factor. The overall conclusion of this research is that, although drought is a complex, nonlinear phenomenon with drought characteristics varying with climate type and catchment characteristics, generic patterns can be derived that reflect the different hydrological processes underlying drought propagation. These processes result in different hydrological drought types that are shown to play a role both on the catchment scale and on the global scale. The non-linear effects of snow and storage-related processes on drought are not incorporated sufficiently in the currently-used large-scale models and drought indices. Possible future steps include more focus on catchment control, in particular the representation of storage, and the role of temperature and evapotranspiration. Additionally, the findings of this research can be applied to hydrological drought forecasting, prediction in ungauged basins, and prediction under global change. </p

Підтексти драм Лесі Українки

У драмах Лесі Українки має місце діалог з культурою декадансу, який увиразнює тематику меланхолії та похідних від неї мотивів усамітнення, небуття, долі, жертви.In Lesya Ukrainka’s dramas the dialogue with the culture of decadence is conducted that entails the prominent place of the theme of melancholy and the derivative motifs of solitude, non-existence, fate, martyr

Anthropogenic activities alter drought termination

Despite the increasing influence of human activities on water resources in our current Anthropocene era, the impacts of these activities on the duration, rate and timing of the recovery of drought events, known as the drought termination phase, remain unknown. Here, we present the first assessment of how different human activities (i.e. water abstractions, reservoirs, water transfers) affect drought termination. Six case studies in Europe were used to analyse the human influence on streamflow drought termination characteristics. For all case studies, we compared the drought and drought termination characteristics derived from a human-influenced time series of streamflow (observation data) and a naturalised time series (modelled data) for the same period. Overall, results clearly demonstrate the influence of human activities on drought terminations in all the studied catchments. Groundwater abstractions, reservoirs and mixed influences were all found to increase the average duration of drought termination, whereas water transfers into the catchment decreased drought termination duration. Results also show that average drought termination rates increased in all case studies due to the human influence. Furthermore, start and end months of the termination phase were more skewed to certain months in human-influenced data than in the naturalised situation. Future research could extend this new knowledge by looking to add further case studies and covering different human activities to gain a wider understanding on how human actions modify hydrological droughts and their recovery. Furthering this work could also help to improve the forecasting of drought recovery in the Anthropocene, which is important for informing drought management decisions

Managing groundwater supplies subject to drought: perspectives on current status and future priorities from England (UK)

Effective management of groundwater resources during drought is essential. How is groundwater currently managed during droughts, and in the face of environmental change, what should be the future priorities? Four themes are explored, from the perspective of groundwater management in England (UK): (1) integration of drought definitions; (2) enhanced fundamental monitoring; (3) integrated modelling of groundwater in the water cycle; and (4) better information sharing. Whilst these themes are considered in the context of England, globally, they are relevant wherever groundwater is affected by drought

A coupled agent-based model to analyse human-drought feedbacks for agropastoralists in dryland regions

Drought is a persistent hazard that impacts the environment, people's livelihoods, access to education and food security. Adaptation choices made by people can influence the propagation of this drought hazard. However, few drought models incorporate adaptive behavior and feedbacks between adaptations and drought. In this research, we present a dynamic drought adaptation modeling framework, ADOPT-AP, which combines socio-hydrological and agent-based modeling approaches. This approach is applied to agropastoral communities in dryland regions in Kenya. We couple the spatially explicit hydrological Dryland Water Partitioning (DRYP) model with a behavioral model capable of simulating different bounded rational behavioral theories (ADOPT). The results demonstrate that agropastoralists respond differently to drought due to differences in (perceptions of) their hydrological environment. Downstream communities are impacted more heavily and implement more short-term adaptation measures than upstream communities in the same catchment. Additional drivers of drought adaptation concern socio-economic factors such as wealth and distance to wells. We show that the uptake of drought adaptation influences soil moisture (positively through irrigation) and groundwater (negatively through abstraction) and, thus, the drought propagation through the hydrological cycle

Current opportunities and challenges in developing hydro-climatic services in the Himalayas: report of pump priming project November 2019

The India-UK Water Centre (IUKWC) promotes cooperation and collaboration between the complementary priorities of NERC-MoES water security research. This report assesses the significant issues for hydro-climatic modelling and service development in the mountain regions of northern India. It is the main output from an IUKWC Pump Priming Project that ran from March to August 2018 and has been produced by an author team of climate scientist, hydrologists and glaciologist from India and the UK. It is found that although state-ofthe-art weather forecasting, climate, hydrological and glacier models are being used there are still substantial prediction uncertainties on all prediction timescales. There is a lack of detailed understanding of regional meteorological and hydrological processes, which results in potential misrepresentation of them in the models. Large-scale drivers of regional climate variability in the region have been identified but questions remain about their relevance on different timescales, their interaction, and their representation in global weather forecasting and climate models. Improving short-term predictions and climate change projections requires more meteorological, hydrological and glaciological observations in the Himalayas, improvements in data sharing, as well as additional efforts to integrate meteorological and hydrological modelling. There is also a need for improved communication of predictions to users, which should include their uncertainties. The report is intended for workshop participants, India-UK Water Centre Open Network members and stakeholders