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Floods have strong impacts in the Mediterranean region and there are concerns about a possible increase in their intensity due to climate change. In this study, a large database of 171 basins located in southern France with daily discharge data with a median record length of 45 years is considered to analyze flood trends and their drivers. In addition to discharge data, outputs of precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration from the SAFRAN reanalysis and soil moisture computed with the ISBA land surface model are also analyzed. The evolution of land cover in these basins is analyzed using the CORINE database. The trends in floods above the 95th and 99th percentiles are detected by the Mann–Kendall test and quantile regression techniques. The results show that despite the increase in extreme precipitation reported by previous studies, there is no general tendency towards more severe floods. Only for a few basins is the intensity of the most extreme floods showing significant upward trends. On the contrary, most trends are towards fewer annual flood occurrences above both the 95th and 99th percentiles for the majority of basins. The decrease in soil moisture seems to be an important driver for these trends, since in most basins increased temperature and evapotranspiration associated with a precipitation decrease are leading to a reduction in soil moisture. These results imply that the observed increase in the vulnerability to these flood events in recent decades is mostly caused by human factors such as increased urbanization and population growth rather than climatic factors.

This paper proposes a methodology for estimating the transient probability distribution of yearly hydrological variables conditional to an ensemble of projections built from multiple general circulation models (GCMs), multiple statistical downscaling methods (SDMs), and multiple hydrological models (HMs). The methodology is based on the quasi-ergodic analysis of variance (QE-ANOVA) framework that allows quantifying the contributions of the different sources of total uncertainty, by critically taking account of large-scale internal variability stemming from the transient evolution of multiple GCM runs, and of small-scale internal variability derived from multiple realizations of stochastic SDMs. This framework thus allows deriving a hierarchy of climate and hydrological uncertainties, which depends on the time horizon considered. It was initially developed for long-term climate averages and is here extended jointly to (1) yearly anomalies and (2) low-flow variables. It is applied to better understand possible transient futures of both winter and summer low flows for two snow-influenced catchments in the southern French Alps. The analysis takes advantage of a very large data set of transient hydrological projections that combines in a comprehensive way 11 runs from four different GCMs, three SDMs with 10 stochastic realizations each, as well as six diverse HMs. The change signal is a decrease in yearly low flows of around −20  % in 2065, except for the more elevated catchment in winter where low flows barely decrease. This signal is largely masked by both large- and small-scale internal variability, even in 2065. The time of emergence of the change signal is however detected for low-flow averages over 30-year time slices starting as early as 2020. The most striking result is that a large part of the total uncertainty – and a higher one than that due to the GCMs – stems from the difference in HM responses. An analysis of the origin of this substantial divergence in HM responses for both catchments and in both seasons suggests that both evapotranspiration and snowpack components of HMs should be carefully checked for their robustness in a changed climate in order to provide reliable outputs for informing water resource adaptation strategies.

The length of streamflow observations is generally limited to the last 50 years even in data-rich countries like France. It therefore offers too small a sample of extreme low-flow events to properly explore the long-term evolution of their characteristics and associated impacts. To overcome this limit, this work first presents a daily 140-year ensemble reconstructed streamflow dataset for a reference network of near-natural catchments in France. This dataset, called SCOPE Hydro (Spatially COherent Probabilistic Extended Hydrological dataset), is based on (1) a probabilistic precipitation, temperature, and reference evapotranspiration downscaling of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis over France, called SCOPE Climate, and (2) continuous hydrological modelling using SCOPE Climate as forcings over the whole period. This work then introduces tools for defining spatio-temporal extreme low-flow events. Extreme low-flow events are first locally defined through the sequent peak algorithm using a novel combination of a fixed threshold and a daily variable threshold. A dedicated spatial matching procedure is then established to identify spatio-temporal events across France. This procedure is furthermore adapted to the SCOPE Hydro 25-member ensemble to characterize in a probabilistic way unrecorded historical events at the national scale. Extreme low-flow events are described and compared in a spatially and temporally homogeneous way over 140 years on a large set of catchments. Results highlight well-known recent events like 1976 or 1989-1990, but also older and relatively forgotten ones like the 1878 and 1893 events. These results contribute to improving our knowledge of historical events and provide a selection of benchmark events for climate change adaptation purposes. Moreover, this study allows for further detailed analyses of the effect of climate variability and anthropogenic climate change on low-flow hydrology at the scale of France.

Climate change is bringing more risk and uncertainty to water management in the world’s Mediterranean-climate regions. In this paper, we compare two Mediterranean-climate watersheds: the Durance basin in southern France, and the Sacramento River in northern California, USA. For the Durance basin, we present new research on climate change impacts on water management, and discuss their implications for potential adaptation responses. For the Sacramento River, we review existing climate data and research on impacts and describe the progress in implementing various adaptation strategies. We find that the Durance and Sacramento—while certainly at different scales—nonetheless share many characteristics, such as a highly variable climate and hydrology, and extensive hydromodification and intense water competition, which will be affected by climate change. Although some issues and approaches to adaptation are unique to each region, at the same time, these two river basins are utilizing some similar strategies to cope with a changing climate, such as regional planning and management and water conservation.

Cet article propose une analyse prospective sur l’avenir de la diversification maraîchère et légumière en région parisienne, en France, sous l’angle de la ressource en eau. Cette diversification est indispensable en raison de sa contribution variée et quasi-permanente le long de l’année aux systèmes alimentaires territorialisés, notamment à la restauration collective. Cependant, la demande relativement importante en eau de ces cultures d’une part, et la disponibilité de cette ressource pour l’irrigation d’autre part, soulèvent des questions sur la viabilité de cette diversification. En suivant une approche territorialisée à l’échelle du sud-ouest francilien, nous avons réalisé des enquêtes auprès d’exploitations diversifiées, ainsi qu’un travail prospectif sur les évolutions à l’horizon 2060 des besoins en eau des cultures, à partir de données climatiques et de calculs de bilans hydriques, et de la disponibilité de l’eau souterraine pour l’irrigation à partir de données hydro-climatiques issues du projet Explore2. Nos principaux résultats indiquent que l’eau est un levier d’une agriculture diversifiée au sein des projets alimentaires territoriaux et qu’il y a un fort enjeu de raréfaction de cette ressource au vu des hausses notables de la demande en eau d’environ 40 % à l’échelle d’une exploitation diversifiée, conjointement à une tendance à la baisse potentiellement prévue quant à l’eau souterraine (disponible pour l’irrigation) à l’horizon 2060. Nos résultats sont ensuite discutés, notamment à la lumière de la solution, identifiée comme prioritaire par les agriculteurs, du stockage de l’eau afin de pérenniser cette diversification, et plus largement, le projet de re-territorialisation de l’alimentation. This paper presents a forward-looking analysis of the future of market garden and vegetable diversification, from a water resources perspective. This diversification is important because of its varied and quasi-permanent contribution throughout the year to localized food systems, and in particular to mass catering. However, the relatively high demand on the one hand, and the availability of this resource for irrigation on the other hand, raise questions about the future of this diversification. Following a territorial approach at the scale of the south-west Ile-de-France region, in France, we carried out surveys of diversified farms, and carried out prospective work on changes in crop water requirements up to 2060, based on climatic data (water balances), and groundwater availability (for irrigation), based on hydro-climatic data from the Explore2 project. Our main results indicate that water is a lever for diversification, and that there is a strong risk of water scarcity in view of the significant increases in water demand, of around 40% at the scale of a diversified farm, and the downward trends potentially predicted for groundwater (for irrigation) by 2060. Our results are then discussed, particularly in the light of the priority solution of water storage to sustain this diversification, and more broadly, the project to re-territorialize food.

This study aims to assess the changes in the intermittence of river flows across France in the context of climate change. Projections of flow intermittence are derived from the results of the Explore2 project, which is the latest national study that proposes a wide range of potential hydrological futures for the 21st century. The multi-model approach developed within the Explore2 project enables uncertainties in future flow intermittence to be characterized. Combined with discrete observations of flow states, hydrological projections are post-processed to compute the daily probability of flow intermittence (PFI) on each element of the partition of France in hydro-ecoregions (HERs). The post-processing consists of calibrating logistic regressions between the historical flow states of the National Low-Flow Observatory (ONDE) network and the flow data simulated by the hydrological models involved in Explore2 run with the SAFRAN atmospheric reanalysis as inputs. After calibration, these regressions are used to project daily PFIs for the entire 21st century, based on flow simulations from five hydrological models driven by up to 17 climate projections under RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 climate change scenarios. The results show good agreement among the hydrological models regarding the increase in flow intermittence under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The projected increase in mean daily PFI between July and October and the shift of the first and last days when PFI exceeds 20 % both suggest a gradual intensification and extension of dry spells throughout the century. The southern regions of France are likely to experience greater increases in runoff intermittence than the northern regions, and mountainous regions such as the Alps and the Pyrenees are likely to experience changes in their dynamics of intermittence with a reduction in winter intermittence and the apparition of or increase in summer intermittence. The uncertainty of these projected changes is larger in northern France due to greater intermodel variability in this region.

Floods are a major natural hazard in the Mediterranean region, causing deaths and extensive damages. Recent studies have shown that intense rainfall events are becoming more extreme in this region but, paradoxically, without leading to an increase in the severity of floods. Consequently, it is important to understand how flood events are changing to explain this absence of trends in flood magnitude despite increased rainfall extremes. A database of 98 stations in southern France with an average record of 50 years of daily river discharge data between 1959 and 2021 was considered, together with a high-resolution reanalysis product providing precipitation and simulated soil moisture and a classification of weather patterns associated with rainfall events over France. Flood events, corresponding to an average occurrence of 1 event per year (5317 events in total), were extracted and classified into excess-rainfall, short-rainfall, and long-rainfall event types. Several flood event characteristics have been also analyzed: flood event durations, base flow contribution to floods, runoff coefficient, total and maximum event rainfall, and antecedent soil moisture. The evolution through time of these flood event characteristics and seasonality was analyzed. Results indicated that, in most basins, floods tend to occur earlier during the year, the mean flood date being, on average, advanced by 1 month between 1959–1990 and 1991–2021. This seasonal shift could be attributed to the increased frequency of southern-circulation weather types during spring and summer. An increase in total and extreme-event precipitation has been observed, associated with a decrease of antecedent soil moisture before rainfall events. The majority of flood events are associated with excess rainfall on saturated soils, but their relative proportion is decreasing over time, notably in spring, with a concurrent increased frequency of short rain floods. For most basins there is a positive correlation between antecedent soil moisture and flood event runoff coefficients that is remaining stable over time, with dryer soils producing less runoff and a lower contribution of base flow to floods. In a context of increasing aridity, this relationship is the likely cause of the absence of trends in flood magnitudes observed in this region and the change of event types. These changes in flood characteristics are quite homogeneous over the domain studied, suggesting that they are rather linked to the evolution of the regional climate than to catchment characteristics. Consequently, this study shows that even in the absence of trends, flood properties may change over time, and these changes need to be accounted for when analyzing the long-term evolution of flood hazards.

The impact of climate change on floods varies across regions, and observed trends in flood characteristics are often explained by differential changes in the processes that cause flooding. This study explores changes in flood magnitude and flood-generating processes under different climate change scenarios for a large number of basins in France. It is based on an unprecedented exercise to model the impacts of climate change on hydrology, using a semi-distributed model (GRSD) applied to 3727 basins with 22 Euro-CORDEX bias-corrected climate projections using two greenhouse gas emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Annual maxima of daily simulated streamflow were extracted for the period 1975–2100, resulting in a set of over 10 million flood events, and a trend analysis was carried out on both flood magnitudes and flood generating processes. Increasing trends in flood magnitudes are only found in the northern regions of France, although multi-model convergence rarely exceeds 60 %. The highest increases are observed for the 20 year floods and under the RCP8.5 scenario. A classification of floods according to their generating process revealed that floods linked to soil saturation represent more than half of all floods in France. The relative change in the importance of the different flood-generating processes is not spatially homogeneous and varies by region. The proportion of floods linked to soil saturation excess is increasing in the temperate and continental climate zones in the Northeast, while decreasing in the southern Mediterranean regions. In these Mediterranean regions, the proportion of floods linked to infiltration excess related to extreme rainfall is increasing. Both the frequency and magnitude of floods linked to snowmelt processes are decreasing in mountainous areas. On the contrary, the most extreme floods associated with rainfall on dry soils tend to increase, in line with the increase of rainfall intensity. Overall, trends in antecedent soil moisture conditions are as important as trends in intense rainfall to explain flood hazard trends in the different climate projections. This study shows how important it is to decipher the changes in the different flood generating processes in order to better understand their evolution in different hydroclimatic regions.

Streamflow observations from near-natural catchments are of paramount importance for detection and attribution studies, evaluation of large-scale model simulations, and assessment of water management, adaptation and policy options. This study investigates streamflow trends in a newly-assembled, consolidated dataset of near-natural streamflow records from 441 small catchments in 15 countries across Europe. The period 19622004 provided the best spatial coverage, but analyses were also carried out for longer time periods (with fewer stations), starting in 1932, 1942 and 1952. Trends were Calculated by the slopes of the Kendall-Theil robust line for standardized annual and monthly streamflow, as well as for summer low flow and low flow timing. A regionally coherent picture of annual streamflow trends emerged, with negative trends in southern and eastern regions, and generally positive trends elsewhere. Trends in monthly streamflow for 19622004 elucidated potential causes for these changes, as well as for changes in hydrological regimes across Europe. Positive trends were found in the winter months in most catchments. A marked shift towards negative trends was observed in April, gradually spreading across Europe to reach a maximum extent in August. Low flows have decreased in most regions where the lowest mean monthly flow occurs in summer, but vary for catchments which have flow minima in winter and secondary low flows in summer. The study largely confirms findings from national and regional scale trend analyses, but clearly adds to these by confirming that these tendencies are part of coherent patterns of change, which cover a much larger region. The broad, continental-scale patterns of change are mostly congruent with the hydrological responses expected from future climatic changes, as projected by climate models. The patterns observed could hence provide a valuable benchmark for a number of different studies and model simulations.

The study aims at estimating flow duration curves (FDC) at ungauged sites in France and quantifying the associated uncertainties using a large dataset of 1080 FDCs. The interpolation procedure focuses here on 15 percentiles standardised by the mean annual flow, which is assumed to be known at each site. In particular, this paper discusses the impact of different catchment grouping procedures on the estimation of percentiles by regional regression models. In a first step, five parsimonious FDC parametric models are tested to approximate FDCs at gauged sites. The results show that the model based on the expansion of Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOF) outperforms the other tested models. In the EOF model, each FDC is interpreted as a linear combination of regional amplitude functions with spatially variable weighting factors corresponding to the parameters of the model. In this approach, only one amplitude function is required to obtain a satisfactory fit with most of the observed curves. Thus, the considered model requires only two parameters to be applicable at ungauged locations. Secondly, homogeneous regions are derived according to hydrological response, on the one hand, and geological, climatic and topographic characteristics on the other hand. Hydrological similarity is assessed through two simple indicators: the concavity index (IC) representing the shape of the dimensionless FDC and the seasonality ratio (SR), which is the ratio of summer and winter median flows. These variables are used as homogeneity criteria in three different methods for grouping catchments: (i) according to an a priori classification of French Hydro-EcoRegions (HERs), (ii) by applying regression tree clustering and (iii) by using neighbourhoods obtained by canonical correlation analysis. Finally, considering all the data, and subsequently for each group obtained through the tested grouping techniques, we derive regression models between physiographic and/or climatic variables and the two parameters of the EOF model. Results on percentile estimation in cross validation show that a significant benefit is obtained by defining homogeneous regions before developing regressions, particularly when grouping methods make use of hydrogeological information.