Title: Comparison of perturbation methods for rainfall and temperature data: case of a Belgian catchment

Authors: Yann Peltier; Benjamin Dewals; Sébastien Erpicum; Michel Pirotton; Pierre Archambeau

Addresses: Hydraulics in Environmental and Civil Engineering (HECE), ArGEnCo Department, University of Liege (ULG), Quartier Polytech 1, allée de la Découverte 9, B52/3 +1, B-4000 Liege, Belgium; Laboratoire d'Hydraulique Saint-Venant, Ecole des Ponts, CEREMA, EDF R&D, UPE, 6 quai Watier BP 49, F-78401, Chatou, France ' Hydraulics in Environmental and Civil Engineering (HECE), ArGEnCo Department, University of Liege (ULG), Quartier Polytech 1, allée de la Découverte 9, B52/3 +1, B-4000 Liege, Belgium ' Hydraulics in Environmental and Civil Engineering (HECE), ArGEnCo Department, University of Liege (ULG), Quartier Polytech 1, allée de la Découverte 9, B52/3 +1, B-4000 Liege, Belgium ' Hydraulics in Environmental and Civil Engineering (HECE), ArGEnCo Department, University of Liege (ULG), Quartier Polytech 1, allée de la Découverte 9, B52/3 +1, B-4000 Liege, Belgium ' Hydraulics in Environmental and Civil Engineering (HECE), ArGEnCo Department, University of Liege (ULG), Quartier Polytech 1, allée de la Découverte 9, B52/3 +1, B-4000 Liege, Belgium

Abstract: Analyses of hydrological impacts of climate change require appropriate methods for perturbing meteoric time-series to represent future climate conditions. Two readily available tools for perturbing rainfalls and temperatures are tested for a medium-sized catchment in Belgium. CCI-HYDR provides three scenarios, tailored for Belgium every decade until 2100. In contrast, KNMI-ADC tool provides 191 scenarios, at a regional level and for two horizons (near and far future). With its three contrasted scenarios of possible future climate conditions, CCI-HYDR is found suitable for forcing computationally intensive detailed hydrological models. With its broader spectrum of climate scenarios, KNMI-ADC tool is suitable for forcing multiple runs of fast conceptual hydrological models. As the two perturbation tools deliver stationary time-series, they are also compared to an alternate method producing transient time-series. Transient stochastic tools are particularly computationally demanding due to their stochastic nature, which is not optimal when combined with detailed distributed hydrological models.

Keywords: rainfall perturbation; climate change scenarios; hydrological modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHST.2019.102318

International Journal of Hydrology Science and Technology, 2019 Vol.9 No.3, pp.266 - 280

Received: 09 Dec 2016
Accepted: 17 Nov 2017
Published online: 18 Sep 2019 *

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