the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Compound droughts under climate change in Switzerland
Abstract. The co-occurrence of meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological droughts (multivariate compound droughts) in Switzerland during growing season is problematic due to limitations in water abstractions from rivers during low flow periods, while at the same time the need for irrigation is high. We analyse compound droughts for 52 catchments in Switzerland during the extended summer season (May–Oct) using the transient climate and hydrological scenarios for Switzerland (CH2018 and Hydro-CH2018) for both a scenario with mitigation (RCP2.6, 8 model chains) and without mitigation (RCP8.5, 20 model chains). In the RCP8.5 scenario the number of compound drought days is projected to significantly increase by mid-century across all greater regions of Switzerland. The increased frequency is mainly a result of more frequent events (significant) rather than longer event durations (non-significant). Models generally agree on the sign of change. By 2085, compound drought events are projected to occur in median once per catchment per extended summer season north of the Alps and every 1–2 years south of the Alps. Further, the increases in compound drought days mainly occur between May–Oct leading to a shift into the main agricultural production season and a more pronounced seasonality with highest occurrence probabilities between mid-July and the begin of October. Coupled to the increase in days and events, significantly more catchments are projected to be affected by compound droughts at the same time. In the RCP2.6 (mitigation) scenario, the increase in the number of compound drought days and events is not significant by the end of the 21st century. In comparison with RCP8.5, the number of compound drought days are reduced by 50–55 % north of the Alps and up to 75 % south of the Alps by the end of the century. This emphasizes the need for coordinated adaptation in combination with mitigation measures taken at early stage.
- Preprint
(9041 KB) - Metadata XML
-
Supplement
(5554 KB) - BibTeX
- EndNote
Status: final response (author comments only)
-
RC1: 'Comment on nhess-2024-6', Anonymous Referee #1, 05 Mar 2024
Review of "Compound droughts under climate change in Switzerland" von Matt et al.
The topic of compound droughts is pressing and important, and the authors have contributed very nicely in identifying them and using scenarios to see how they might change in a warming climate, using transient climate and hydrological scenarios for Switzerland.
The paper is clearly structured and well written and provides a comprehensive and convincing introduction to the topic.
For some of the underlying assumptions and control model performance tests, the authors refer to previous studies (catchments and calibration validation performance). I think it is important to provide this information directly in the paper or in its appendix to understand the basis on which the scenarios were used and how reliable the models were. Looking at the referenced paper, it appears that the NSE was used to calibrate the models and the KGE and NSE were used to validate them. I would expect that particularly low flow periods would not be so well simulated, or at least not evaluated in the objective function. Perhaps this could also be mentioned in the discussion of uncertainty in the discussion.
As a minimum I would expect a table with the main characteristics of the catchments used, rather than just a map, including mean annual precipitation, mean annual discharge, altitude (range), glaciation percentage, size and some model performance in calibration and validation. The authors state at the end of their discussion that it is important to better understand the processes that lead to these compound droughts, and I believe that to understand these we also need to look at these catchment characteristics and therefore provide them in some form as well.
Other than that, I really enjoyed reading the paper and have very few and small technical comments:
L135 please add what the Hamon equations use as main variables to calculate PET (lon, lat, air temperature)
L139 what does "satisfactorily" mean in terms of performance, please specify
L441 Section ???
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2024-6-RC1 - AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christoph von Matt, 02 Apr 2024
-
RC2: 'Comment on nhess-2024-6', Anonymous Referee #2, 12 Mar 2024
Revision of the manuscript number “nhess-2024-6” entitled “Compound droughts under climate change in Switzerland”.
This manuscript contributes to analyzing compound droughts in different catchments in Switzerland under two circumstances: modelling present and forecasting future climates. The paper is well-structured and written overall and can be published in its present form. I have a few technical comments:
-
L28. Change redaction.
-
L54. What do you mean by “strongly non-linear”? Be more specific with the degree or type of the function, or just mention it as “non-linear”.
-
L55. Avoid using qualifiers such as “strongly”, instead, be more specific with the type of relationship between the variables.
-
L103-L106. Improve redaction.
-
L119-L120. It could be better if you slightly describe what you show in every single section, not only writing the section title.
-
L123. Fix units. 1702 km2 and 1500 m.a.s.l.
-
Figure 7, the label on the ordinate might be better if it says "probability".
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2024-6-RC2 - AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Christoph von Matt, 02 Apr 2024
-
Viewed
HTML | XML | Total | Supplement | BibTeX | EndNote | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
424 | 99 | 23 | 546 | 43 | 15 | 15 |
- HTML: 424
- PDF: 99
- XML: 23
- Total: 546
- Supplement: 43
- BibTeX: 15
- EndNote: 15
Viewed (geographical distribution)
Country | # | Views | % |
---|
Total: | 0 |
HTML: | 0 |
PDF: | 0 |
XML: | 0 |
- 1