Effects of climate change on water resources and runoff in an Alpine basin

✍ Scribed by Klaus Seidel; Cornel Ehrler; Jaroslav Martinec

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 419 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6087
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1085(199808/09)12:10/11<1659::aid-hyp687>3.0.co;2-4

✦ Synopsis

The combined in¯uence of increased temperatures and changed precipitation on the seasonal snow cover and runo is evaluated for the Upper Rhine Basin at Felsberg (3250 km 2 , 560±3614 m a.s.l.). The runo regime re¯ects the snow accumulation in the winter half-year and snowmelt in the summer half-year. The method of predicting future runo regimes is based on high resolution periodical snow cover mapping by satellites. The snow coverage is the main input variable for the snowmelt runo model SRM-ETH (version of the Institute of Technology ETH). The model computes the present runo and the climate-aected snow-covered areas, from which it computes the future runo. Conditions of the present climate are represented by a normalized year. Snow conditions and yearly hydrographs are evaluated for the years 2030 and 2100 according to the given climate scenarios for this region. Quantitative results indicate the decrease of the snow accumulation on 1 April as well as the seasonal redistribution and changes of runo.