Report on future projections of flow intermittence for the 6 European focal DRN
Abstract
Intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams (IRES) account for more than half of the world's rivers.
However, few studies have investigated the evolution of IRES under climate change. To overcome this
problem, DRYvER proposed to provide daily hydrological projections, daily flow conditions and flow
intermittence indicators in 6 European Drying River Networks (DRNs).
The current work aims to provide reach-scale daily flow conditions and flow intermittence indicators
for the period 1985-2100 for each DRN. To this end, daily reach-scale hydrological projections - driven
by several global climate models and Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSP) - are used as input to a
random forest algorithm trained in the historical period with actual observations of daily flow
conditions. Once the flow conditions have been generated, a set of flow intermittence indicators is
calculated to study the evolution of intermittence through the 21st century.
Results highlight the coherence of the intermittence projections and intermittence reconstruction over
the period 1985-2014. The inter-annual number of dry days of each reach of the DRNs from the
projections are quite close to those from the reconstruction. Furthermore, the seasonality is well
captured on all 6 DRNs, providing a reasonable confidence for future intermittence projections. The
period 1985-2100 globally highlights a steady increase of the intermittence on all DRNs, with an
intensity linked to the SSPs considered – i.e. higher increase with higher emissions - and the period
considered. The study also suggests the transition of some reaches from perennial to intermittent,
depending on the catchments, the SSP and the period considered.