Rana Samuels

Climate Change Impacts on Jordan River Flow: Downscaling Application from a Regional Climate Model

Abstract The integration of climate change projections into hydrological and other response models used for water resource planning and management is challenging given the varying spatial resolutions of the different models. In general, climate models are generated at spatial ranges of hundreds of kilometers, while hydrological models are generally watershed specific and based on input at the station or local level. This paper focuses on techniques applied to downscale large-scale climate model simulations to the spatial scale required by local response models (hydrological, agricultural, soil). Specifically, results were extracted from a regional climate model (RegCM) simulation focused on the Middle East, which was downscaled to a scale appropriate for input into a local watershed model [the Hydrological Model for Karst Environment (HYMKE)] calibrated for the upper Jordan River catchment. With this application, the authors evaluated the effect of future climate change on the amount and form of precipita...

Water Management in a Complex Hydrological Basin — Application of Water Evaluation and Planning Tool (WEAP) to the Lake Kinneret Watershed, Israel

Sustainability of fresh water ecosystems and human activities in Mediterranean watersheds under future climate change can be supported with integrated hydrological modeling. The Lake Kinneret Watershed (LKW), which spans over 2730 km2, is divided between three Mediterranean countries, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria; and incorporates four different hydrogeological units: Mt. Hermon in the north, the Golan Heights in the east, the eastern Galilee Mountains in the west, and the Hula Valley in the central part of the watershed. In this study, we used several modeling tools together with a detailed observed database to assemble, test, calibrate and predict simultaneously the water availability within the entire LKW. The hydrological tools that we used compounded of two built-in catchment modules in the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) tool, a model of karst hydrology (HYMKE), lake water balance calculations and artificial rain series based on a stochastic rainfall generation tool. With this setup we defined the “coverage” parameter for water availability and identified vulnerable partial areas inside the watershed, which are more sensitive to extreme draught conditions. The heterogeneity of the LKW water system and the tools we operated enabled the separation of the watershed into regions affected by “climate change” scenarios (mainly reduced amounts of annual rainfall) compared to regions impacted mainly by operational decisions.

MODIS Summer SUHI Cross-sections Anomalies over the Megacities of the Monsoon Asia Region and Global Trends

RESEARCH ARTICLE MODIS Summer SUHI Cross-sections Anomalies over the Megacities of the Monsoon Asia Region and Global Trends Hofit Itzhak-Ben-Shalom, Pinhas Alpert, Oded Potchter and Rana Samuels The Porter School of Environmental Studies, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel Department of Geosciences, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. Box 39040, Tel Aviv, Israel Department of Geography and the Human Environment, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel Department of Geography, Beit Berl College, Beit Berl, Israel