• Energy Research

This Milestone, namely M3.3, is part of Task 3.3 “Downscaling of future climate projections at the case-study scale and their transfer to the Partners”. The aim of M3.3 is to outline the results of the climate change evaluation over the investigated pilot sites. For the future projections of the climate variables (precipitation and temperature), the data provided by EURO-CORDEX initiative under two emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) are used. The main information on the pilot sites, available data, analyses and results are presented. The data are freely downloadable from the web repository https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7247977. This project is part of the PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 1923.

This document represents the evidence of compliance with Milestone 3.1: Choice of the typology of the surrogate models to be tested in the five study cases of the “Innovative and Sustainable Groundwater Management in the Mediterranean” Grant Agreement Number 1923 project. It includes the minutes of the meeting, the results of the survey in relation to the modelling needs of the five case studies and the rest of the project partners, as well as the presentation shown during the meeting. This project is part of the PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 1923.

The data archive InTheMED_WP3_DS_ClimateData is part of Task 3.3 “Downscaling of future climate projections at the case-study scale and their transfer to the Partners” and contains the climate projections at the five pilot sites under two emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). This project is part of the PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 1923.

The overall objective of the InTheMED project is to implement innovative and sustainable management tools and remediation strategies for MED aquifers (inland and coastal) in order to mitigate anthropogenic and climate-change threats by creating new long-lasting spaces of social learning among different interdependent stakeholders, NGOs, and scientific researchers in five field case studies. These are located at the two shores of the MED basin, namely in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Tunisia, and Turkey. InTheMED will develop an inclusive process that will establish an ensemble of innovative assessment and management tools and methodologies including a high-resolution monitoring approach, smart modelling, a socio-economic assessment, web-based decision support systems (DSS) and new configurations for governance to validate efficient and sustainable integrated groundwater management in the MED considering both the quantitative and qualitative aspects. This Milestone, namely M3.4, is part of Task 3.4 “Analysis of Different Scenarios” (Lead: UNIPR/ participants: UPV, TUC, IST-ID, CERTE and BU). The aim of Task 3.4 is to simulate different future scenarios considering the impact of climate and socio-economic changes on groundwater resources at the five pilot sites. At this aim, different surrogate models were developed for each case study. The surrogate models will support the implementation of the Fuzzy WebDSS tool (WP6) aimed at assist decision makers in aquifer management. The M3.4 outlines the definition of climate and socio-economic scenarios and reports the application of surrogate models within the context of the selected scenarios. This project is part of the PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 1923.

The overall objective of the InTheMED project is to implement innovative and sustainable management tools and remediation strategies for MED aquifers (inland and coastal) in order to mitigate anthropogenic and climate-change threats by creating new long-lasting spaces of social learning among different interdependent stakeholders, NGOs, and scientific researchers in five field case studies. These are located at the two shores of the MED basin, namely in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Tunisia, and Turkey. InTheMED will develop an inclusive process that will establish an ensemble of innovative assessment and management tools and methodologies including a high-resolution monitoring approach, smart modelling, a socio-economic assessment, web-based decision support systems (DSS) and new configurations for governance to validate efficient and sustainable integrated groundwater management in the MED considering both the quantitative and qualitative aspects. This Deliverable, namely D3.4, is part of Task 3.4 “Analysis of Different Scenarios” (Lead: UNIPR/ participants: UPV, TUC, IST-ID, CERTE and BU). The aim of Task 3.4 is to simulate different scenarios considering the impact of climate and socio-economic changes on groundwater resources at the five pilot sites. At this aim, different surrogate models were developed for each case study, which are described in Milestone 3.2 (Tanda et al., 2022) and Deliverable 3.2 (Todaro et al., 2023). The surrogate models will support the implementation of the Fuzzy WebDSS tool (Deliverable 6.2; Varouchakis et al., 2023) aimed at assist decision makers in aquifer management. The definition of the scenarios and the description of the application of the surrogate models under these scenarios were presented in Milestone 3.4 (Secci et al., 2023). The D3.4 presents the results of the analysis of the most relevant scenarios in the demo sites. This project is part of the PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 1923.

The Mediterranean region is one of the most responsive areas to climate change and was identified as a major “hot-spot” based on global climate change analyses. This study provides insight into local climate changes in the Mediterranean region under the scope of the InTheMED project, which is part of the PRIMA programme. Precipitation and temperature were analyzed in an historical period and until the end of this century for five pilot sites, located between the two shores of the Mediterranean region. We used an ensemble of 17 Regional Climate Models, developed in the framework of the EURO-CORDEX initiative, under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Over the historical period, the temperature presents upward trends, which are statistically significant for some sites, while precipitation does not show significant tendencies. These trends will be maintained in the future as predicted by the climate models projections: all models indicate a progressive and robust warming in all study areas and moderate change in total annual precipitation, but some seasonal variations are identified. Future changes in droughts events over the Mediterranean region were studied considering the maximum duration of the heat waves, their peak temperature, and the number of consecutive dry days. All pilot sites are expected to increase the maximum duration of heat waves and their peak temperature. Furthermore, the maximum number of consecutive dry days is expected to increase for most of the study areas.

The objective of this study is to provide an overview of local climate change over the Mediterranean (MED) area under the scope of the InTheMED project, EU funded in the framework of the PRIMA programme. Future precipitation and temperature projections are assessed until the end of this century for five different pilot sites, located in the MED region. To this end, the outputs of 17 Regional Climate Models under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios are used. For each pilot site, the raw climate model data were downscaled at each monitoring station location and bias-corrected on the basis of observations recorded in a 30-year historical period. The changes in the annual precipitation are heterogeneous across the five pilot sites: a negligible variation is expected for some areas and a decrease of up to 30% for others. On the contrary, a significant increase in temperature is expected for all sites, confirming the ongoing warming in the MED region. This research is supported by the PRIMA programme under grant agreement No1923, project InTheMED. The PRIMA programme is supported by the European Union.