Impacts of climate change on the evaporation and availability of water in small reservoirs in the Brazilian savannah

Daniel Althoff (), Lineu Neiva Rodrigues and Demetrius David Silva
Additional contact information
Daniel Althoff: Federal University of Viçosa (UFV)
Lineu Neiva Rodrigues: Brazilian Agricultural Research Agency (EMBRAPA – Cerrados)
Demetrius David Silva: Federal University of Viçosa (UFV)

Climatic Change, 2020, vol. 159, issue 2, No 4, 215-232

Abstract: Abstract The Cerrado (Brazilian savannah) is one of the few places in the world that has the potential to increase crop production to meet the projected food demand for 2050. However, for agriculture to be sustainable in this region, irrigation must be efficient. This depends on the water stored in small reservoirs, which play an important role in supporting the local economy. The increase in temperature and net radiation predicted by global climate models may increase the evaporation and reduce the availability of water in these small reservoirs. This work assesses the projected impact of climate change on small reservoir evaporation and water availability in the Brazilian savannah using data from the Eta-HadGEM2-ES and Eta-MIROC5 regional climate models under representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5. Evaporation increases of 7.3% (1.09 mm/year−1) and 18.4% (2.74 mm/year−1) are projected in RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5, respectively, by the year 2100. The water stored in reservoirs is projected to decrease in the future, resulting in higher risks of failure in water supply, especially from the smaller reservoirs. Overall, evaporation increases are expected to reduce the availability of water in small reservoirs during the dry season by 5.5% in RCP 4.5 and 10.4% in RCP 8.5.

Keywords: Irrigation; Mann–Kendall; Climate models; Representative concentration pathways; Water resources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-020-02656-y 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:spr:climat:v:159:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s10584-020-02656-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-020-02656-y

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

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