Regional Climate,
Water, Energy Resources and uncertainties from 1960 to 2030
A main challenge of the current century is the identification of
optimal and sustainable strategies for the management of water and
related resources. Hydrological scenarios required for this are classically
obtained via simulation models from meteorological scenarios. Available
present or future meteorological scenarios are usually not adapted
to the constraints of real water systems - and especially to their
space and time scales.
The first objective of the present research project is to
analyse the possibility to develop a weather generator able to produce
relevant weather scenarios for impact studies.
The uncertainty associated with meteorological scenarios is usually
high. This especially requires the consideration of the whole range
of possible scenarios rather than a few selected ones. This calls
for a probabilistic framework that allows for the generation of a
relevant panel of scenarios. On this other hand, this calls for the
investigation of possible strategies that would allow reducing the
associated uncertainty.
Reducing and accounting for uncertainties in impact assessment
is the second objective of this project.
The water system sensitivity and vulnerability to climate modification
for a given management configuration is difficult to quantify. This
requires the definition of a pertinent set of quantitative and probabilistic
criteria to judge the system behaviour under different climatic and
management configurations. This also requires estimating the significance
of simulated impacts.
The third objective of the project is to develop and apply
such a impact analysis framework.
These analyses and developments will be done by the Laboratoire d’étude
des Transferts en Hydrologie et Environnement (LTHE) in collaboration
with Electricité De France (EDF), the biggest private company
producing electricity of the country, for 2 French mesoscale water
systems presenting striking management issues. Weather scenarios will
next be generated for the present climate situation and for a 2030
climate. Climate change impacts on the water resource and variability,
on related energy resources and variability will be estimated with
associated uncertainty. Quantitative measures will be developed to
assess these impacts and the associated sustainability of the system.
The RIWER2030 project is supported by the
CAPENERGIE competitiveness cluster involving more than 400 partners
from 5 regions in southern France especially.