Impact of Climate Change on Mediterranean Irrigation Demand: Historical Dynamics of Climate and Future Projections

I. García-Garizábal (), J. Causapé, R. Abrahao and D. Merchan

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2014, vol. 28, issue 5, 1449-1462

Abstract: Global warming is causing important changes in climate conditions, which must be studied in detail and locally in those zones where irrigated agriculture is developed—the major consumer of water worldwide. This study proposes the climatic characterization of a historical series (1971–2000) and its future projections (2011–2099) for an Irrigation District located in the Middle Ebro Valley (Spain), for three different scenarios: low, medium, and high global emission levels of greenhouse gases. Analysis of historical series reveals a significant increase in reference evapotranspiration (3.3 mm/year 2 ; 2.4 ‰) along with a decrease in precipitation (2.5 mm/year 2 ; 5.6 ‰). A comparison was carried out between real historical data and the scenarios produced by the climate models and it was observed that the most adequate climate model to predict climate in the study zone is MPI-ECHAM5. For the XXI century, MPI-ECHAM5 predicts cyclic climate trends but with a general increment in aridity, which intensifies according to the scenario chosen. Changes in climate are affecting agriculture doubly, since evapotranspiration requirements increase at the same time that water resources decrease. These effects are felt especially in irrigated agriculture, since the growing cycles of the main crops coincide with the months most affected by climate change. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Agriculture; Evapotranspiration; Precipitation; Temperature; Model; Trend (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-014-0565-7 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:waterr:v:28:y:2014:i:5:p:1449-1462

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-014-0565-7

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().