scholarly journals Assessment of the Water-Energy Nexus under Future Climate Change in the Nile River Basin

Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Abay Yimere ◽  
Engdawork Assefa

This study investigated the Water-Energy relationship in the Nile River Basin under changing climate conditions using an energy and water model. Climate change will likely affect both water and energy resources, which will create challenges for future planning and decision making, particularly considering the uncertainty surrounding the direction and magnitude of such effects. According to the assessment model, when countries depend heavily on hydropower for energy, power generation is determined by climate variability. For example, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan are more hydropower-dependent than Burundi or Rwanda. As a result, the trading relationships and economic gains of these countries shift according to climate variability. Among 18 climate scenarios, four demonstrate a change in climate and runoff. Under these scenarios, trading partnerships and economic gains will favor Ethiopia and Egypt instead of Sudan and Egypt. This study examines the extent of potential climate challenges, their effects on the Nile River Basin, and recommends several solutions for environmental planners and decision makers. Although the proposed model has the novel ability of conducting scientific analyses with limited data, this research is still limited by data accessibility. Finally, the study will contribute to the literature on the climate chamber effects on regional and international trade.

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 6187-6207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dagnenet Fenta Mekonnen ◽  
Zheng Duan ◽  
Tom Rientjes ◽  
Markus Disse

Abstract. Understanding responses by changes in land use and land cover (LULC) and climate over the past decades on streamflow in the upper Blue Nile River basin is important for water management and water resource planning in the Nile basin at large. This study assesses the long-term trends of rainfall and streamflow and analyses the responses of steamflow to changes in LULC and climate in the upper Blue Nile River basin. Findings of the Mann–Kendall (MK) test indicate statistically insignificant increasing trends for basin-wide annual, monthly, and long rainy-season rainfall but no trend for the daily, short rainy-season, and dry season rainfall. The Pettitt test did not detect any jump point in basin-wide rainfall series, except for daily time series rainfall. The findings of the MK test for daily, monthly, annual, and seasonal streamflow showed a statistically significant increasing trend. Landsat satellite images for 1973, 1985, 1995, and 2010 were used for LULC change-detection analysis. The LULC change-detection findings indicate increases in cultivated land and decreases in forest coverage prior to 1995, but forest area increases after 1995 with the area of cultivated land that decreased. Statistically, forest coverage changed from 17.4 % to 14.4%, by 12.2 %, and by 15.6 %, while cultivated land changed from 62.9 % to 65.6 %, by 67.5 %, and by 63.9 % from 1973 to 1985, in 1995, and in 2010, respectively. Results of hydrological modelling indicate that mean annual streamflow increased by 16.9 % between the 1970s and 2000s due to the combined effects of LULC and climate change. Findings on the effects of LULC change on only streamflow indicate that surface runoff and base flow are affected and are attributed to the 5.1 % reduction in forest coverage and a 4.6 % increase in cultivated land areas. The effects of climate change only revealed that the increased rainfall intensity and number of extreme rainfall events from 1971 to 2010 significantly affected the surface runoff and base flow. Hydrological impacts by climate change are more significant as compared to the impacts of LULC change for streamflow of the upper Blue Nile River basin.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3885
Author(s):  
Christos Spyrou ◽  
Michael Loupis ◽  
Νikos Charizopoulos ◽  
Ilektra Apostolidou ◽  
Angeliki Mentzafou ◽  
...  

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are being deployed around the world in order to address hydrometeorological hazards, including flooding, droughts, landslides and many others. The term refers to techniques inspired, supported and copied from nature, avoiding large constructions and other harmful interventions. In this work the development and evaluation of an NBS applied to the Spercheios river basin in Central Greece is presented. The river is susceptible to heavy rainfall and bank overflow, therefore the intervention selected is a natural water retention measure that aims to moderate the impact of flooding and drought in the area. After the deployment of the NBS, we examine the benefits under current and future climate conditions, using various climate change scenarios. Even though the NBS deployed is small compared to the rest of the river, its presence leads to a decrease in the maximum depth of flooding, maximum velocity and smaller flooded areas. Regarding the subsurface/groundwater storage under current and future climate change and weather conditions, the NBS construction seems to favor long-term groundwater recharge.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dagnenet Fenta Mekonnen ◽  
Markus Disse

Abstract. Climate change is becoming one of the most arguable and threatening issues in terms of global context and their responses to environment and socio/economic drivers. Its direct impact becomes critical for water resource development and indirectly for agricultural production, environmental quality, economic development, social well-being. However, a large uncertainty between different Global Circulation Models (GCM) and downscaling methods exist that makes reliable conclusions for a sustainable water management difficult. In order to understand the future climate change of the Upper Blue Nile River Basin, two widely used statistical down scaling techniques namely LARS-WG and SDSM models were applied. Six CMIP3 GCMs for LARS-WG (CSIRO-MK3, ECHAM5-OM, MRI-CGCM2.3.2, HaDCM3, GFDL-CM2.1, CCSM3) model while HadCM3 GCM and canESM2 from CMIP5 GCMs for SDSM were used for climate change analysis. The downscaled precipitation results from the prediction of the six GCMs by LARS WG showed inconsistency and large inter model variability, two GCMs showed decreasing trend while 4 GCMs showed increasing in the range from −7.9 % to +43.7 % while the ensemble mean of the six GCM result showed increasing trend ranged from 1.0 % to 14.4 %. NCCCS GCM predicted maximum increase in mean annual precipitation. However, the projection from HadCM3 GCM is consistent with the multi-model average projection, which predicts precipitation increase from 1.7 % to 16.6 %. Conversely, the result from all GCMs showed a similar continuous increasing trend for maximum temperature (Tmax) and minimum temperature (Tmin) in all three future periods. The change for mean annual Tmax may increase from 0.4 °c to 4.3 °c whereas the change for mean annual Tmin may increase from 0.3 °c to 4.1 °c. Meanwhile, the result from SDSM showed an increasing trend for all three climate variables (precipitation, minimum and maximum temperature) from both HadCM3 and canESM2 GCMs. The relative change of mean annual precipitation range from 2.1 % to 43.8 % while the change for mean annual Tmax and Tmin may increase from 0.4 °c to 2.9 °c and from 0.3 °c to 1.6 °c respectively. The change in magnitude for precipitation is higher in RCP8.5 scenarios than others as expected. The present result illustrate that both down scaling techniques have shown comparable and good ability to simulate the current local climate variables which can be adopted for future climate change study with high confidence for the UBNRB. In order to see the comparative downscaling results from the two down scaling techniques, HadCM3 GCM of A2 scenario was used in common. The result obtained from the two down scaling models were found reasonably comparable and both approaches showed increasing trend for precipitation, Tmax and Tmin. However, the analysis of the downscaled climate data from the two techniques showed, LARS WG projected a relatively higher increase than SDSM.


2012 ◽  
Vol 365 (3) ◽  
pp. 99 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Michael Link ◽  
Franziska Piontek ◽  
Jürgen Scheffran ◽  
Janpeter Schilling

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