Impact of climate change and water use policies on hydropower potential in the south-eastern Alpine region

Majone, Bruno; Villa, Francesca; Deidda, Roberto; Bellin, Alberto

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.05.009

Cited by 122 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…In September, the discharge with respect to two levels of recurrence (intervals of 100 years and 50 years) also shows great inter-annual variation. For example, the recurrence interval of a 100-year return period during 1960-1991 is 9060 m 3 The above variation implies that the underlying occurrence of extreme discharge intensity and frequency likelihood may greatly increase in wet seasons (from June to October). The possibility of extreme drought frequency events may increase in May and June.…”

Section: Hydrological Frequency Analysis For Jinsha Rivermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cascade hydropower stations are effective to enhance water resource utilization, optimize regional water allocation, and mitigate flood risk through comprehensive scheduling. However, the changing climate has shown significant impacts on flood frequency in the Jinsha River [2], which challenges the scheduling of the cascade hydropower stations [3,4]. In the past, a variety of studies have been carried out on the optimal scheduling of cascade hydropower stations [5][6][7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adaptation of Cascade Hydropower Station Scheduling on A Headwater Stream of the Yangtze River under Changing Climate Conditions

Zhai

Lin

Guo

et al. 2017

Water

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Abstract:Cascade hydropower stations are effective in water resource utilization, regional water allocation, and flood risk management. Under changing climate conditions, water resources would experience complex temporal and spatial changes, which may lead to various issues relating to flood control and water resource management, and challenge the existing optimal scheduling of cascade hydropower stations. It is thus important to conduct a study on cascade hydropower station scheduling under changing climate conditions. In this study, the Jinsha River rainfall-discharge statistical model is developed based on the statistical relationship between meteorological and runoff indicators. Validation results indicate that the developed model is capable of generating satisfactory simulation results and thus can be used for future Jinsha River runoff projection under climate change. Meanwhile, the Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies (PRECIS) is run to project future rainfall in the Jinsha River basin under two General Circulation Models (ECHAM5 and HadAM3P), two scenarios (A1B and B2), and four periods (1961-1990, 1991-2020, 2021-2050, and 2051-2099). The regional climate modeling data are analyzed and then fed into the Jinsha hydrological model to analyze the trends of future discharge at Xiangjiaba Hydro Station. Adaptive scheduling strategies for cascade hydropower stations are discussed based on the future inflow trend analysis and current flood scheduling mode. It is suggested that cascade hydropower stations could be operated at flood limited water level (FLWL) during 2021-2099. In addition, the impoundment of cascade hydropower stations should be properly delayed during the post-flood season in response to the possible occurrence of increased and extended inflow in wet seasons.

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Section: Hydrological Frequency Analysis For Jinsha Rivermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptation of Cascade Hydropower Station Scheduling on A Headwater Stream of the Yangtze River under Changing Climate Conditions

Zhai

Lin

Guo

et al. 2017

Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…These studies look at different spatial scales ranging from a global or continental perspective [5,[9][10][11][12]] to a country or local perspective [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] using different Global (GCM) and Regional Climate Models (RCM). The models are run with either the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES, [20]) or Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP, [21]) scenarios.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Climate Change on Swiss Hydropower

et al. 2018

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Abstract:Hydropower represents an important pillar of electricity systems in many countries. It not only plays an important role in mitigating climate change, but is also subject to climate-change impacts. In this paper, we use the Swiss electricity market model Swissmod to study the effects of changes in water availability due to climate change on Swiss hydropower. Swissmod is an electricity dispatch model with a plant-level representation of 96% of Swiss hydropower plants and their interrelations within cascade structures. Using this detailed model in combination with spatially disaggregated climate-change runoff projections for Switzerland, we show that climate change has ambiguous impacts on hydropower and on the overall electricity system. Electricity prices and overall system costs increase under dry conditions and decrease under average or wet conditions. While the change of seasonal patterns, with a shift to higher winter runoff, has positive impacts, the overall yearly inflow varies under hydrological conditions. While average and wet years yield an increase in inflows and revenues, dry years become drier, resulting in the opposite effect. Even though different in magnitude, the direction of impacts persists when applying the same changes in inflows to the 2050 electricity system.

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“…Apart from its relevance for downstream areas, mountain hydrology also strongly impacts hydropower production (e.g. Finger et al, 2012;Majone et al, 2016), determines the habitat suitability of numerous aquatic organisms (e.g. Short and Ward, 1980;Hari et al, 2006;Wilhelm et al, 2015;Padilla et al, 2015) and even plays a noticeable role in the global emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (Butman and Raymond, 2011;Raymond et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

StreamFlow 1.0: an extension to the spatially distributed snow model Alpine3D for hydrological modelling and deterministic stream temperature prediction

Gallice

Bavay²,

Brauchli

et al. 2016

Geosci. Model Dev.

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Abstract. Climate change is expected to strongly impact the hydrological and thermal regimes of Alpine rivers within the coming decades. In this context, the development of hydrological models accounting for the specific dynamics of Alpine catchments appears as one of the promising approaches to reduce our uncertainty of future mountain hydrology. This paper describes the improvements brought to StreamFlow, an existing model for hydrological and stream temperature prediction built as an external extension to the physically based snow model Alpine3D. StreamFlow's source code has been entirely written anew, taking advantage of object-oriented programming to significantly improve its structure and ease the implementation of future developments. The source code is now publicly available online, along with a complete documentation. A special emphasis has been put on modularity during the re-implementation of StreamFlow, so that many model aspects can be represented using different alternatives. For example, several options are now available to model the advection of water within the stream. This allows for an easy and fast comparison between different approaches and helps in defining more reliable uncertainty estimates of the model forecasts. In particular, a case study in a Swiss Alpine catchment reveals that the stream temperature predictions are particularly sensitive to the approach used to model the temperature of subsurface flow, a fact which has been poorly reported in the literature to date. Based on the case study, StreamFlow is shown to reproduce hourly mean discharge with a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.82 and hourly mean temperature with a NSE of 0.78.

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Impact of climate change and water use policies on hydropower potential in the south-eastern Alpine region

Cited by 122 publications

References 74 publications

Adaptation of Cascade Hydropower Station Scheduling on A Headwater Stream of the Yangtze River under Changing Climate Conditions

Adaptation of Cascade Hydropower Station Scheduling on A Headwater Stream of the Yangtze River under Changing Climate Conditions

The Impact of Climate Change on Swiss Hydropower

StreamFlow 1.0: an extension to the spatially distributed snow model Alpine3D for hydrological modelling and deterministic stream temperature prediction

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