2nd CLARA webinar
Speakers: Cinzia Alessandrini (ARPAE) and Carolina Cantone (SMHI)
Moderator: Christiana Photiadou (SMHI)
Climate change is an issue of major concern nowadays and global warming may profoundly affect temporal and spatial distributions of surface water availability. Its impact on the natural and human environment is studied intensively, as the expected shift in climate will be significant in the next few decades.
On October 15, 2019, Cinzia Alessandrini (ARPAE) and Carolina Cantone (SMHI) hold the webinar titled “Can seasonal forecasts and climate change projections effectively improve water planning?” to present the PWA (Parma river basin Assessment) climate service, AQUA and ROAT Service.
PWA Service
The main goal of PWA is to use innovative modeling techniques and integrated co-development with users to enhance the quality and usability of climate services that provide climate change information to water related sectors. The objectives of PWA climate service are the evaluation of fresh water balance, water quality, nutrient and bed loads transport including ecological issues using meteorological and climatological inputs.
Users will be able to access results combining different sources of input data: for example, results starting from seasonal forecasts in order to evaluate water quality status, or climate change scenarios as input to evaluate the potential climate change impact for water resources management in the whole Parma river basin.
AQUA Service
Availability of freshwater in lakes and aquifers has been a sensitive topic in the past recent years due the hotter temperatures in summer and lack of precipitation that made it difficult to public and private sector to provide urban water supply. The change in weather patterns and consequent effects on the hydrological cycle are affecting Sweden with lack of snow, increased risk of sky falls and flash floods as well as droughts in summer. These phenomena made it necessary for users and decision-makers to have a better understanding of future weather patterns to make optimal planning of resources throughout the year and apply new adaptation plans.
The AQUA system is a visualization web-based platform designed within the development of the CLARA H2020 project aiming at providing an easy and intuitive tool addressed to drinking water producers. The system shows meteorological and hydrological observed and modelled data as well as short and long term forecasts. Modelling is done at the local scale to have a better description of the system and to ensure high reliability of the results. Forecasts span from 10 days to 6 months ahead and include weather and climatological (based on historical meteorological data) forecasts. Information about critical water levels as well as water extraction rates are provided from the user and are included in the calculations to evaluate how different strategies can affect freshwater availability in the following months. If available, historical data can also be displayed to facilitate the comparison of current water levels with “below”, “near” and “above” normal conditions.
ROAT Service
The Reservoir Operation Assessment Tool (ROAT), developed by University of Cordoba within the CLARA H2020 project, is a web-based platform that aims to help managers in taking their operational decisions in multi-objective reservoirs located in areas prone to complex meteorological conditions (i.e. intense flood and severe drought episodes, and snow presence). In this context, water managers should minimize damages caused by extreme events and maximize available water for different purposes, such as agricultural, environmental, industrial and urban demands, which compete one another in a context of water scarcity.
ROAT service supports operational decision making through: 1) anticipating the risk of flood by precipitation or snowmelt through a short term forecast, real time monitoring, and hydrological modelling, 2) anticipating the risk of drought in seasonal scale (6 months) by the use of the most forward-looking probabilistic seasonal forecast, 3) offering decision options on the management of the seasonal allocation of water demands among the different users by the use of an Automatic Reservoir Manager.
