Regional climate change impacts: II. Impacts on water management works

The sensitivity of some critical water management issues, such as reservoir storage and hydroelectric production, to climatic variability and change on a regional basis is analysed and presented. This is the second of two papers presented in this issue dealing with the regional hydrological effects of climatic change. By using a set of plausible hypothetical climatic scenarios to represent both greenhouse warming and precipitation changes, the sensitivity of the guaranteed annual fresh water and energy supply levels has been evaluated under conditions of altered runoff for four connected multi-purpose reservoirs in central Greece. It is shown that reservoirs designed and operated under current climatic conditions are, in general, affected by the climatic changes examined. A dramatic increase of the risk associated with the annual guaranteed quantity of water supply and energy production would occur if greenhouse warming were accompanied by a reduction in annual precipitation. Significant increases of storage volume would then be needed to maintain existing water and energy yields at tolerable risk levels.