TITLE:
Assessment of Climate Change Impacts in Greece: A General Overview
AUTHORS:
Maria A. Mimikou, Evangelos A. Baltas
KEYWORDS:
Basin; Water Resources; Hydrological Indicators; Reservoir; Simulation Model
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Climate Change,
Vol.2 No.1,
March
27,
2013
ABSTRACT: The climatic and hydrological systems are tightly related and any
induced changes cause chained interactions. In an attempt to adequately manage
water resources in Greece,
a series of experiments were conducted with different GCMs in selected study
areas to understand this interplay. This paper is an overview of the studies
carried out in the Aliakmon, the Upper Acheloos,
the Portaikos, and the Pinios basins, where the regional hydrological cycle was
evaluated on river basin spatial scale to assess regional impacts and
variability. The impacts of climate change on the water resources are presented
in a synthetic quantitative way, in order to draw general conclusions
concerning the trends of the hydrological indicators. A good agreement was
observed between the different climatic experiments, and the trends on the
selected hydrological indicators demonstrate an increase in temperature and
PET, reduction in the mean annual precipitation and runoff, and a shifting of
the snowmelt period towards the winter, while the snowpack storage was proved
to be a controlling factor. It is accentuated that relatively small decreases
in the mean annual precipitation cause dramatic increase of reservoir risk
levels of annual firm water supply and energy production. As a result, radical
increases of reservoir storage volume are required to maintain firm water and
energy yields at tolerable risk levels. The adaptive capacity of the country is
not that high, and a series of serious actions need to be taken in order to
mitigate the effects of climate change and assess its impacts.