Climate Change Incidence on the Rhone River Hydrology
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TECHNICAL SYNTHESIS CLIMATE CHANGE INCIDENCE ON THE RHONE RIVER HYDROLOGY LLANES Alexandre E-mail: [email protected] February 2008 AgroParisTech - Engref à Montpellier B.P.7355_34086 MONTPELLIER Cedex 4 Tél. (33) 4 67 04 71 00 Fax. (33) 4 67 04 71 01 1 RESUME Le changement climatique est aujourd’hui considéré comme une réalité par les scientifiques. Toutefois, les liens de causalité entre changement climatique et modifications des régimes hydrologiques sont difficiles à établir. A cette difficulté perceptible s’ajoute la complexité du fonctionnement du régime hydrologique et climatique du Rhône. Dans ce contexte d’incertitude la société BRL, gestionnaire et distributrice de l’eau du Rhône en Languedoc Roussillon, s’interroge sur la disponibilité et la vulnérabilité de la ressource en eau pour les années à venir. MOTS CLES : Changement climatique, hydrologie, Rhône, étiages, BRL, vulnérabilité de la ressource. ABSTRACT Climatic change is widely considered as a reality by scientists. Nevertheless, impacts of hydrological extremes are more difficult to observe and to predict. It is shown how the possible change in the characteristics of precipitations, associated TO climatic change, could alter the river flows in the basin of the Rhone River particularly for summer and the lowest water levels. In this uncertain context, the BRL Company, distributor of Rhone water in Languedoc-Roussillon, investigates the future availability and vulnerability of the resource. KEY WORDS : Climate change, hydrology, Rhone, lowest water level, availability, growth samples, BRL, vulnerability of the resource. ABREVIATION IPCC : Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change MCG : Modèles de Circulation Générale BRL : Bas-Rhône Languedoc (société) MEDD : Ministère de l’Ecologie et du Développement Durable GICC : Gestion des Impacts du Changement Climatique CNRM : Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques CNR : Compagnie Nationale du Rhône SEPALRC : Société d’Etudes et de Promotion pour l’Aqueduc Languedoc-Roussillon- Catalogne ENSO : El Niño et Southern Oscillation MINAN : des débits journaliers minimums annuel VCN : valeur minimale annuelle du débit moyen sur 7 jours ou sur 30 QCN : valeur minimale annuelle du débit seuil sur 7jours ou sur 30 jours ETP : Evapotranspiration Potentielle QMNA5 : débit mensuel minimal dans l’année de période de retour de 5 ans DOE : Débit Objectif d’Etiage DCR : Débits de CRise 2 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 4 1 GENERAL FRAMEWORKS ............................................................................... 5 1.1 GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE................................................................................................... 5 1.2 GENERAL CIRCULATION MODELS........................................................................................ 5 1.3 CLIMATE CHANGE AND LOW WATER LEVELS ................................................................... 6 2 THE RHONE RIVER ........................................................................................... 7 2.1 A mode modified during the 20th century ............................................................................. 8 2.2 Low water levels of the Rhone river ....................................................................................... 8 3 IMPACT STUDIES OF THE CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE RHONE RIVER ...... 9 3.1 Retrospective approaches ..................................................................................................... 10 3.2. Prospective approaches .................................................................................................... 13 4 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 16 3 Introduction The evolution of the climate related to the human activity is today an established fact (IPCC, 2001). The obvious increase in the concentration of gases and greenhouse effect in the atmosphere has had effects on a certain number of climatic variables, involving for example the increase in the number of hot days and a reduction in the number of very cold days. Precipitation will increase to, at least in the Northern hemisphere, while the snow-covered peaks and the extent of the non-polar glaciers will be in marked regression. Beyond these direct observations, the general circulation models (GCM) show a persistence of these tendencies during the century. Uncertainties which weigh on these projections are very important because the models are conditioned by socio-economic scenarios imagined for the years to come. Moreover, the results can significantly vary from one GCM to another and a certain number of phenomena, acting on intermediate scales, is taken into account in a way very simplified in the computer codes (of which the space resolution is rather coarse) and remains sometimes largely ignored. Thus, in horizon 2100, the increase in the total temperature should range between 1.4 and 5.8 °C. These climatic disturbances should have effects on the hydrological system. However, these consequences are difficult to evaluate, for two main reasons: first of all, a total warming can have antagonistic effects on the flows, by increasing at the same time the evapotranspiration and precipitations. The influence of these two factors also differs according to the regime, nival or rain, of the river. Moreover, the space and temporal scales usable at exit of the MCG do not agree with those of the hydrological model rain/flow. To date, no coherent signal on large scales was detected for the flows, in spite of changes proven at the regional scales (Renard, 2006). Parallel to the context of the total change, the vulnerability link to the extreme hydrological events is in constant increasing, in particular in France. The water resource is requested more and more for the needs for agriculture and industry. These last years (severe low water levels of 2003 and 2005) led to the perception of a recrudescence of the extreme events in France, which is to date has not been established. The water availability is for the managers (producer of electricity, water supply, etc) a dominating character as for the evolution of the plans of stock management. In this context of uncertainty, the BRL company, saddle jib crane of the water of the Rhone river in Languedoc-Roussillon, wonders about the availability and the vulnerability of the water resource for the years to come. This component appears all the more important as a large scale project aiming at extending their distribution network UPTO Béziers and Narbonne was launched in 2005 (figure 1). That implies an additional abstraction at peak Source : Sébastien Chazot, BRL times from 2 to 4 m³/s (BRL, Collectif, 2006). Thus, for the Rhone river subjected to the modifications of weather forcEs, which this share of abstractions represents in hydrologicaimpact l? The absence of a clear answer on behalf of the scientists as for the reality of a climate change affecting the extreme events is partLy due to the methodological difficulty to detect tendencies in this type of hydro- climatic series which, by nature, are subjected to an important natural variability. It is however paramount to be Figure 1 able to answer this interrogation, because as regards prevention of the risks of shortage, the stationnarity of the phenomena in time is an assumption which 4 is almost systematic. 1 GENERAL FRAMEWORKS 1.1 GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE The general operation of the climate of the Earth is based on the concept of balance of the energy assessment: the received total radiation of planet must equalize the emitted total radiation. The distribution of outgoing energy is obviously uniform, neither temporally nor spatially. This imbalance is the cause of the general atmospheric and oceanic circulation. The force of Coriolis, related to the rotation of the Earth on itself, complicates this general outline. There exist thus preferential circulations of energies on the surface of the sphere (dominant winds, oceanic currents). In any general information, the climate is obviously not stationary: it has evolved and has moved since the birth of the Earth and will continue to evolve and move, but one of the major difficulties in the climate study is the existence of variability which have temporal scales (annual, decennial, etc), and regional heterogeneous. This low frequency variability is particularly problematic in the optics of search for evolution. As example, work has put forward oscillations on the strong rains in Spain and the south of France, by using historical data (Llasat et al., 2002), but these oscillatory behaviors are only observed and their constitutive mechanisms remain very largely ignored. 1.2 GENERAL CIRCULATION MODELS The man influences for this complex system was the increase in the gases that caused the greenhouse effect which, in short, limits the heat loss of the terrestrial sphere by trapping the infra-red remission from the ground surface. The increase in these gases does not result formally in warming. Reality is much more complex. The various components of the climate cannot be dissociated from to each other and the modification of one of them will be reflected on the others by feedback phenomenon. It is thus necessary to consider the climatic system as a whole. It is the role of the general circulation models (GCM), which have as a function to recreate a realistic climatic evolution under the influence of various forces (natural and/or