nl-NL webmaster ZET solutions b.v. Fri, 18 May 2012 09:56:36 GMT copyright This interdisciplinary book, authored by an international team with several former WATCH-members and edited by Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz, offers a comprehensive overview of flood risk in Europe, past and present, and future; a focus on detection and attribution of change with respect to climate change and its impacts, water resources and flood risk, the re-insurer’s view point, and future projections of flood risk; and rectification of common-place judgements. http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10792024/WATCH-contribution-in-book-Changes-in-Flood-Risk-in-Europe"> Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:06:35 GMT EU WATCH Atmospheric circulation models predict an irrigation-rainfall feedback. However, actual field evidences for local evaporation recycling (moisture feedback) are weak. We present strong field evidence for an increase in rainfall at the mountains located downwind of irrigated zones. We chose two regions, located in semiarid southern Spain, where irrigation started at a well defined date, and we analyzed rainfall statistics before and after the beginning of irrigation. Analyzed statistics include the variation of (1) mean rainfall Δ P, (2) ratio of monthly precipitation to annual precipitation Δ r, and (3) number of months with noticeable rainfall episodes Δ Pmin after a shifting from unirrigated to irrigated conditions. All of them show statistically significant increases. Δ P and Δ r show larger and more statistically significant variations in June and July than in August. They also tend to increase with the annual volume of water applied in the neighbouring upwind irrigation lands. Increases in Δ Pmin are statistically significant during the whole summer. That is, the number of noticeable rainfall events displays a relevant increase after irrigation. In fact, it is this number, rather than sporadic large rainfall episodes what makes the summers wetter. The increase in rainfall, while statistically significant, is distributed over a broad region, so that it is of little relevance from a water resources perspective, although it may enhance vegetation yield. http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10646432/WATCH-work-in-HESS-article-Irrigation-enhances-precipitation-at-the-mountains-downwind"> Fri, 22 Oct 2010 10:58:02 GMT EU WATCH Publications (Papers and Reports) overview 2009. http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10384073/Papers-and-Reports-in-the-context-of-WATCH-overview-2009-and-2008"> Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:39:04 GMT EU WATCH The Niger Inland Delta in Mali floods every year in response to rain falling hundreds of kilometers upstream. This study examines the remote hydrological feedback between rainfall, fluvial inundation, and new convective storms. A satellite thermal infra-red dataset spanning 24 years is used to quantify both temporal variability in wetland extent, and the response of cloud cover to the wetland during August and September. The daytime initiation of convective storms is found to double during periods of inundation, consistent with a hypothesised “wetland breeze” effect. A signal of enhanced cloud cover propagates hundreds of kilometers westwards, linked to increased numbers of long-lived Mesoscale Convective Systems emanating from the wetland region. This effect raises the possibility that changes in upstream water use could have a climatic impact over a wide area. http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10372723/WATCH-Paper-Feedbacks-on-Convection-from-an-African-Wetland-in-press-with-Geophysical-Research-Letters"> Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:28:52 GMT EU WATCH The Indian subcontinent is one of the most intensely irrigated regions of the world and state of the art climate models do not account for the representation of irrigation. Sensitivity studies with the regional climate model REMO show distinct feedbacks between the simulation of the monsoon circulation with and without irrigation processes. We find that the temperature and mean sea level pressure, where the standard REMO version without irrigation shows a significant bias over the areas of Indus basin, is highly sensitive to the water used for irrigation. In our sensitivity test we find that removal of this bias has caused less differential heating between land and sea masses. This in turns reduces the westerlies entering into land from Arabian Sea, hence creating conditions favorable for currents from Bay of Bengal to intrude deep into western India and Pakistan that have been unrealistically suppressed before. We conclude that the representation of irrigated water is unavoidable for realistic simulation of south Asian summer monsoon and its response under global warming. http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10349012/Impact-of-irrigation-on-the-South-Asian-summer-monsoon"> Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:19:58 GMT EU WATCH The paper Space-time modeling of catchment scale drought characteristics (Tallaksen, L.M., Hisdal, H. & van Lanen, H.A.J.) was recently published in the Journal of Hydrology as a contribution to the WATCH project (WB4; Task 4.1.2a). http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10345292/Space-time-modeling-of-catchment-scale-drought-characteristics"> Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:13:49 GMT EU WATCH WATCH member Petra Döll from the Institute of Physical Geography, Goethe University Frankfurt has written the paper Global-scale analysis of river flow alterations due to water withdrawals and reservoirs (Döll, P., Fiedler, K., Zhang, J.), and has been published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (Discuss., 6, 4773-4812, 2009). This paper is relevant to Work Package 1.4. http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10318647/Paper-published-in-HESS-Global-scale-analysis-of-river-flow-alterations-due-to-water-withdrawals-and-reservoirs"> Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:19:50 GMT EU WATCH WATCH member Dieter Gerten (The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research - PIK) has contributed to the article "Causes of change in 20th century global river discharge". http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10110316/Causes-of-change-in-20th-century-global-river-discharge"> Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:32:44 GMT EU WATCH Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of low river flows, affecting both water quantity and water quality. Although climate change impacts on water quantity are widely recognised, the impacts on water quality are less known. The aim of this paper is to assess the effects of droughts on the water quality of the river Meuse in western Europe, based on analysis of existing water quality data. Time series of water quality were investigated at two monitoring stations during two severe drought periods, occurring in the years 1976 and 2003. The results indicate a general deterioration of the water quality of the Meuse river during droughts, with respect to water temperature, eutrophication, major elements, and some heavy metals and metalloids. This decline in water quality is primarily caused by favourable conditions for the development of algae blooms (high water temperatures, long residence times, high nutrient concentrations) and a reduction of the dilution capacity of point source effluents. http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10023538/Impact-of-summer-droughts-on-the-water-quality"> Tue, 20 May 2008 11:36:07 GMT EU WATCH Hagemann, S., H. Göttel, D. Jacob, P. Lorenz and E. Roeckner, 2008., Improved regional scale processes reflected in projected hydrological changes over large European catchments Climate Dynamics, doi: 10.1007/s00382-008-0403-9 http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10001922/Improved-scale-processes-reflected-in-projected-hydrological-changes-over-large-European-catchments"> Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT EU WATCH Lanen, H.A.J. van, Tallaksen, L.M & Rees, G. (2007) Droughts and climate change. In: Commission Staff Working Document Impact Assessment (SEC(2007) 993), Accompanying document to Communication Addressing the challenge of water scarcity and droughts in the European Union (COM(2007) 414), Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, Belgium. http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10001930/Droughts-and-climate-change"> Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT EU WATCH Tallaksen, L.M. & Van Lanen, H.A.J. (2007) Key aspects of low flow and drought. In: Book of Abstracts, International CHR-Workshop – Expert Consultation, Würzburg, Germany, 25-26 September 2007, 13-18. (pdf) http://www.eu-watch.org/articles/10001931/Key-aspects-of-low-flow-and-drought"> Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:00:00 GMT EU WATCH