Analysis of the Potential Impact of Climate Change on Climatic Droughts, Snow Dynamics, and the Correlation between Them
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemAutor
Hidalgo-Hidalgo, José David; Collados Lara, Antonio Juan; Pulido Velázquez, David; Rueda Valdivia, Francisco José; Pardo Igúzquiza, EulogioEditorial
MDPI
Materia
Climate change Drought analysis Statistical corrections Ensemble of scenarios
Fecha
2022-03-29Referencia bibliográfica
Hidalgo-Hidalgo, J.-D.; Collados-Lara, A.-J.; Pulido-Velazquez, D.; Rueda, F.J.; Pardo-Igúzquiza, E. Analysis of the Potential Impact of Climate Change on Climatic Droughts, Snow Dynamics, and the Correlation between Them. Water 2022, 14, 1081. [https://doi.org/10.3390/w14071081]
Patrocinador
Research project SIGLO-AN (RTI2018-101397- B-I00) from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities; GeoE.171.008.TACTIC from the GeoERA organization funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020; Andalusian Plan for Research Development and Innovation PAIDI 2021, POSTDOC_21_00154Resumen
Climate change is expected to increase the occurrence of droughts, with the hydrology in alpine systems being largely determined by snow dynamics. In this paper, we propose a methodology to assess the impact of climate change on both meteorological and hydrological droughts, taking into account the dynamics of the snow cover area (SCA). We also analyze the correlation between these types of droughts. We generated ensembles of local climate scenarios based on regional climate models (RCMs) representative of potential future conditions. We considered several sources of uncertainty: different historical climate databases, simulations obtained with several RCMs, and some statistical downscaling techniques. We then used a stochastic weather generator (SWG) to generate multiple climatic series preserving the characteristics of the ensemble scenario. These were simulated within a cellular automata (CA) model to generate multiple SCA future series. They were used to calculate multiple series of meteorological drought indices, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), and a novel hydrological drought index (Standardized Snow Cover Index (SSCI)). Linear correlation analysis was applied to both types of drought to analyze how they propagate and the time delay between them. We applied the proposed methodology to the Sierra Nevada (southern Spain), where we estimated a general increase in meteorological and hydrological drought magnitude and duration for the horizon 2071–2100 under the RCP 8.5 emission scenario. The SCA droughts also revealed a significant increase in drought intensity. The meteorological drought propagation to SCA droughts was reflected in an immediate or short time (1 month), obtaining significant correlations in lower accumulation periods of drought indices (3 and 6 months). This allowed us to obtain information about meteorological drought from SCA deficits and vice versa.