Climate projections in Lake Maggiore watershed using statistical downscaling model

Abstract

Precipitation and temperature over the Lake Maggiore watershed greatly influence its water balance. Local communities from both Italy and Switzerland rely on the watershed for agriculture, tourism and hydropower production. Accurate climate projections in this area are vital in dealing with their impacts and yet are still lacking. Future climate was assessed by applying the Statistical DownScaling Model (SDSM) and using CanESM2 predictors. Three scenarios defined by RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 were adopted. Based on our results, SDSM is to a certain degree applicable for simulating precipitation and temperature in an Alpine area. Results indicate that warming from now until the end of the century will be about 2 to 3 times greater without global mitigation. Temperature is estimated to increase throughout the 21st century, with a stronger warming trend in the northeastern part of the region than in the southwestern part. The strength of the warming at the end of the century highly depends on the scenario considered, with an increase up to 1.7°C for the mitigation scenario RCP2.6 compared to 4.2°C for the unmitigated scenario RCP8.5. Seasonal precipitation is expected to change depending on the future scenarios. Most of the region is expected to display a seasonally positive precipitation change during the cold season and vice versa, resulting in a shift in the peak rainy season from autumn to winter. These findings suggest that the area might be vulnerable to global change and will provide useful insight to develop a better strategy for the management of water resources and to study the adoptive measures to manage flood disasters.

Future Climate Projections in Algeria Using Statistical DownScaling Model

“…These results corroborate previous studies on modelling daily precipitation (Saidi et al 2020;Wilby et al 2002;Gagnon et al 2005). This is because of the complex characteristics of daily events and to the fact, modeling precipitation is one of the most challenging climate variables and in conditional models, there is an intermediate process between regional forcing and local station weather which in turn depend on regional-scale predictors such as humidity and atmospheric pressure (Gebrechorkos et al 2019).…”

“…To eliminate the biases from the daily time series of SDSM's downscaled data, a bias correction method is performed by applying the two following equations (Salzmann et al 2007;Mahmood and Babel 2013;Saidi et al 2020).…”

“…Nowadays, SDSM is broadly adopted due to its reliability, simplicity and great performance as well as the free accessibility of the dedicated software (Wilby et al 2013;Saidi et al 2020 The scientific community to downscale different climatic parameters like precipitation and temperature has also used SDSM as a user-friendly software package extensively. Most scientists and researchers used a different kind of statistical models and come to the point that SDSM is one of reasonable and reliable approach among all others (Tahir et al 2018;Khazaei et al 2020;Zehtabian et al 2016;Khan et al 2006).…”

Spoiled for Choice during Cold Season? Habitat Use and Potential Impacts of the Invasive Silurus glanis L. in a Deep, Large, and Oligotrophic Lake (Lake Maggiore, North Italy)

“…The ecological and economic impacts of European catfish may be more intense in the future, due to global warming. One of the latest climatic predictions on the Lake Maggiore basin [78] forecasted an increase of the average air temperature from 1.7 • (best scenario) to 4 • C (worst scenario) by the end of the century. While the effect of rising air temperatures may be dampened with depth, there is evidence that in the first 70 m of depth, water temperatures follow the trend of air temperatures, with a predicted warming up to >3 • C by 2085, which is variable according to the considered scenario [79].…”

Spoiled for Choice during Cold Season? Habitat Use and Potential Impacts of the Invasive <em>Silurus glanis</em> L. in a Deep, Large and Oligotrophic Lake (Lake Maggiore, North Italy)

“…Ecological and economic impacts of European catfish may be more intense in the future, due to global warming. One of the latest climatic predictions on Lake Maggiore basin [74], forecasted an increase of average air temperature from 1.7° (best scenario) to 4° C (worst scenario) by the end of the century. While the effect of rising air temperatures may be dampened with depth, there is evidence that in the first 70 m depth, water temperatures follow the trend of air temperatures, with a predicted warming up to > 3 ° C by 2085, with this being variable according to the considered scenario [75].…”