Examination of the 21 European countries and Turkey in terms of water resources along with the effect of climate change by time series clustering

Abstract

Today, the problem of climate change is addressed in many ways. Climate change would have a major impact on the hydrological cycle and consequently on available water resources. Therefore, the location and timing of the water resources in the world change. Water is an indispensable resource that connects all living things together and directly affects their lives. Water is a biological requirement not only for man, but also for economic, social, and cultural life itself. This study aims to identify similar countries in terms of water resources by taking into account the precipitation amounts together with climate change. For this purpose, time series clustering was conducted to precipitation amounts of 22 countries between 2000 and 2017 with the Hierarchical clustering and Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) clustering methods based on two distance measures. Countries are divided into two clusters and they were evaluated according to their water risk levels and populations.