More green and less blue water in the Alps during warmer summers

Theodoros Mastrotheodoros, Christoforos Pappas, Peter Molnar, Paolo Burlando, Gabriele Manoli, Juraj Parajka, Riccardo Rigon, Borbala Szeles, Michele Bottazzi, Panagiotis Hadjidoukas and Simone Fatichi ()
Additional contact information
Theodoros Mastrotheodoros: Institute of Environmental Engineering
Christoforos Pappas: Université de Montréal
Peter Molnar: Institute of Environmental Engineering
Paolo Burlando: Institute of Environmental Engineering
Gabriele Manoli: Institute of Environmental Engineering
Juraj Parajka: Vienna University of Technology
Riccardo Rigon: University of Trento
Borbala Szeles: Vienna University of Technology
Michele Bottazzi: University of Trento
Panagiotis Hadjidoukas: Zurich Research Laboratory
Simone Fatichi: Institute of Environmental Engineering

Nature Climate Change, 2020, vol. 10, issue 2, 155-161

Abstract: Abstract Climate change can reduce surface-water supply by enhancing evapotranspiration in forested mountains, especially during heatwaves. We investigate this ‘drought paradox’ for the European Alps using a 1,212-station database and hyper-resolution ecohydrological simulations to quantify blue (runoff) and green (evapotranspiration) water fluxes. During the 2003 heatwave, evapotranspiration in large areas over the Alps was above average despite low precipitation, amplifying the runoff deficit by 32% in the most runoff-productive areas (1,300–3,000 m above sea level). A 3 °C air temperature increase could enhance annual evapotranspiration by up to 100 mm (45 mm on average), which would reduce annual runoff at a rate similar to a 3% precipitation decrease. This suggests that green-water feedbacks—which are often poorly represented in large-scale model simulations—pose an additional threat to water resources, especially in dry summers. Despite uncertainty in the validation of the hyper-resolution ecohydrological modelling with observations, this approach permits more realistic predictions of mountain region water availability.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0676-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:10:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1038_s41558-019-0676-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0676-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().