Juan I. López-Moreno

Changes in Climate, Snow and Water Resources in the Spanish Pyrenees: Observations and Projections in a Warming Climate

The Pyrenees constitute one of the greatest sources of freshwater in the Spanish territory, but, like many other mountain systems in the world, they are subject to environmental changes that ultimately affect the availability of water resources in areas downstream. In this study, we offer an assessment of hydrological changes in the Pyrenees, from a warming climate perspective, including climate and snow cover trends, changes in the timing of river flows, and future changes under climate change scenarios. Overall, we found that increasing temperatures are responsible for a lesser accumulation of snow over time, although with spatial differences. As a consequence, the occurrence of spring flows (that largely depend on snowmelt) on the studied rivers, has shifted earlier by approximately one month (from mid-June to mid-May). Future projections, which are made by coupling regional climate models outputs and hydrological modelling, indicate that observed decrease in snow accumulation and shifts in streamflow timing will exacerbate in a warmer short-term future (2050). The amount of water yields will not change significantly, only will suffer a slight decrease due to increased evapotranspiration. Observed and projected hydrological changes must be considered by water managers and environmental technicians if a sustainable management of the water resource and the mountain territory is to be done.

Seasonal and annual daily precipitation risk maps for the Andean region of Peru

We develop for the first time maps of annual and seasonal extreme precipitation risk in the Andean region of Peru. For this purpose, we used the complete daily precipitation records existing in Peru. In each meteorological station, we obtained series of events of de-clustered daily intensity, total precipitation duration, total magnitude and dry-spell length. Using a peak-overthreshold approach we fitted the annual and seasonal series of these variables to a GeneralizedPareto distribution, obtained the distribution parameters and validated the performance of different thresholds to obtain reliable estimations of the precipitation probability. The parameters obtained in the different meteorological stations were mapped using a universal krigging approach using the elevation and the distance to the ocean as co-variables. Maps of parameters were validated using a jack-knife approach and maximum expected precipitation intensity, magnitude, duration and dryspell length estimated for a period of 25 and 50 years. The reliability of the spatial methodology was validated comparing observed precipitation and estimated by the spatial modelling in the different stations.

The influence of climate and land-cover scenarios on dam management strategies in a high water pressure catchment in North-east Spain

This research was funded by LIFE Programme| EU LIFE (LIFE12ENV/ES/000536). We would like to thank the Spanish Meteorological State Agency (AEMET), the Meteorologica Service of Catalonia (MeteoCat-SMC), and the Agencia Catalana del Aigua (ACA) for providing the climatic and streamflow databases used in this study. This work has been supported by research projects: “LIFE12 ENV/ES/000536-Demonstration and validation of innovative methodology for regional climate change adaptation in the Mediterranean area (LIFE MEDACC)”, financed by the LIFE programme of the European Commission; PCIN-2015-220 and CGL2014-52135-C03-01, financed by the Spanish Commission of Science and Technology and FEDER; IMDROFLOOD, financed by the Water Works 2014, INDECIS, which is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate and also funded by FORMAS (Sweden), DLR(Germany), BMWFW(Austria), IFD (Denmark), MINECO(Spain), and ANR (France), with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462).

Assessing the Impact of Different Measurement Time Intervals on Observed Long-Term Wind Speed Trends

We would like to thank the AEMET for supplying wind speed data. C. A-M. received a postdoctoral fellowship # JCI-2011-10263. Research supported by projects CGL2011-27574-C02-02, CGL2011-27536/HID and CGL2011-29263-C02-01 financed by the Spanish Commission of Science and Technology.