Quantifying Climate Variability for Actual and Projected Conditions in a Large South Mediterranean Catchment.

Gara A.;K. Gader;S. Khlifi;Vanclooster, Marnik;C. Bouvier
(2022) Soil and Water resources management for Combating Desertification in Drylands under Climate Change (SWDCC 2022) — Location: Djerba Island, Tunisia (14.June.2022)

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Climate changes (CC) proved to have major impacts on the sustainable life on earth, especially for regions already suffering from water resources deficiency. In this context, most of the south Mediterranean countries are classified as hotspots for CC and the pressures induced by CC challenge reaching in this region the Sustainable Developments Goals. To provide exhaustive CC information at the regional scale, we quantify in this research the current and the projected alterations on the Precipitation (P) and Potential Evapotranspiration (PE) for the Medjerda catchment situated in Tunisia. We used the observed daily data provided from 20 rain gauges and 3 climate stations collected from the governmental institutions. First, we used these data to calculate climate indicators from the Climdex package available in R, which permits mapping the spatial and quantitative variability for the current conditions. Subsequently, we collected CC prediction data from the CMIP5 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project - Phase 5. We adopted the Multi-Model Mean (MME) methodology for CC predictions and we corrected these data for bias for two emission scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5), by means of a linear scaling method using the observed historical data. The metrics obtained for the current conditions showed the existence of seasonal and annual changes in average and extreme for P and PE, which is conform with the Mediterranean context. Benchmarked with the historical observed data, the projected maps for two prediction horizons 2040-2070 and 2070-2100, showed an increased frequency of dry spells and heat waves with a severe drought and climate indices when using various statistical tools. The potential projected decrease in rainfalls was more significant for the catchments situated in the semi-arid regions in the eastern part of the catchment, especially for the RCP 8.5, where we strongly suggest appropriate risk management actions to face CC impacts.
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Gara A., K. Gader, S. Khlifi, Vanclooster, M., & C. Bouvier. (2022). Quantifying Climate Variability for Actual and Projected Conditions in a Large South Mediterranean Catchment. Soil and Water resources management for Combating Desertification in Drylands under Climate Change (SWDCC 2022), Djerba Island, Tunisia. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/240697