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

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.

Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Water Storage Changes in the Nile River Basin from GRACE/GRACE-FO and Modeling

This research assesses the changes in total water storage (TWS) during the twentieth century and future projections in the Nile River Basin (NRB) via TWSA (TWS anomalies) records from GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), GRACE-FO (Follow-On), data-driven-reanalysis TWSA and a land surface model (LSM), in association with precipitation, temperature records, and standard drought indicators. The analytical approach incorporates the development of 100+ yearlong TWSA records using a probabilistic conditional distribution fitting approach by the GAMLSS (generalized additive model for location, scale, and shape) model. The model performance was tested using standard indicators including coevolution plots, the Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient, cumulative density function, standardized residuals, and uncertainty bounds. All model evaluation results are satisfactory to excellent. The drought and flooding severity/magnitude, duration, and recurrence frequencies were assessed during the studied period. The results showed, (1) The NRB between 2002 to 2020 has witnessed a substantial transition to wetter conditions. Specifically, during the wet season, the NRB received between ~50 Gt./yr. to ~300 Gt./yr. compared to ~30 Gt./yr. to ~70 Gt./yr. of water loss during the dry season. (2) The TWSA reanalysis records between 1901 to 2002 revealed that the NRB had experienced a positive increase in TWS of ~17% during the wet season. Moreover, the TWS storage had witnessed a recovery of ~28% during the dry season. (3) The projected TWSA between 2021 to 2050 unveiled a positive increase in the TWS during the rainy season. While during the dry season, the water storage showed insubstantial TWS changes. Despite these projections, the future storage suggested a reduction between 10 to 30% in TWS. The analysis of drought and flooding frequencies between 1901 to 2050 revealed that the NRB has ~64 dry-years compared to ~86 wet-years. The exceedance probabilities for the normal conditions are between 44 to 52%, relative to a 4% chance of extreme events. The recurrence interval of the normal to moderate wet or dry conditions is ~6 years. These TWSA trajectories call for further water resources planning in the region, especially during flood seasons. This research contributes to the ongoing efforts to improve the TWSA assessment and its associated dynamics for transboundary river basins.

The AWESOME Project: A decision analytic framework for managing Water Energy Food and Ecosystems across sectors and scales in the South Mediterranean

<p>Rapid population growth and rising economic prosperity are imperatively challenging the South Mediterranean and the African North-East to a point where they may compromise the sustainable use of natural resources. In those regions, the demand for water, energy, food, and the preservation of ecosystems are expected to increase relevantly. Transboundary rivers like the Nile River Basin represent an enormous source of water, energy, food, and ecosystems (WEFE), which often brings conflicts and individualistic policies among the sharing countries. The adoption of integrated and participatory approaches that explicitly account for the WEFE Nexus are necessary to explore multisectoral synergies and tradeoffs and to generate shared economic, environmental, and societal benefits.</p><p>Focused on the Nile River Basin and born in this context, we present here the AWESOME project (i.e. mAnaging Water, Ecosystems and food across sectors and Scales in the sOuth Mediterranean), whose main objective is developing a decision-analytic framework based on a multi-level, integrated WEFE model to address the Nexus and explore the interdependencies and feedbacks across a hierarchy of spatial scales, from the macroeconomic development (macro), to regional planning (meso), down to the single farm (local).</p><p>At the local scale, a demo-site of smart agricultural solutions (soilless agriculture, e.g., hydroponics, aquaponics) is currently under construction, and it will provide indicators on effectiveness and sustainability of these new technologies to back up existing systems in a dryer future. The study on site will also demonstrate the performance of such a technology within its local economy and ecosystem. At the meso scale, we are developing a decision-analytic framework covering the course of the Nile River Basin, from the Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD) in Ethiopia up to the Nile Delta, based on hydrological models and combined with the results of systems analysis methods with advanced a-posteriori multi-objective optimization algorithms. We plan to simulate existing water availability, water distributions system and new agricultural technologies, upscaling the local scale assessments while downscaling the climate, energy, crop, and ecosystems projections at the macro scale. This approach allows the design of a set of efficient solutions and associated performance with respect to the WEFE multidimensional assessment space, where stakeholders and policy makers will be able to explore multisectoral tradeoffs and negotiate potential compromise alternatives.</p><p>We expect that AWESOME will make substantial progress in complex systems analysis to support the transition towards a more sustainable and resilient agriculture along the Nile River Basin under diverging water availability and demand due to the projected impacts of changing climate and society.</p>