65-year changes of annual streamflow volumes across Europe with a focus on the Mediterranean basin [post]

Daniele Masseroni, Stefania Camici, Alessio Cislaghi, Giorgio Vacchiano, Christian Massari, Luca Brocca
2020 unpublished
<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Determining the spatio-temporal variability of annual streamflow volume plays a relevant role in hydrology for improving and implementing sustainable and resilient policies and practices of water resource management. This study investigates annual streamflow volume trends in a newly-assembled, consolidated and validated dataset of daily mean river flow records from more than 3,000 stations, which cover near-natural basins in more than 40 countries
more » ... across Europe. Although the dataset contains streamflow time-series from 1850 to 2015 in some stations, the statistical analyses were carried out by including observations from 1950 to 2015 in order to have a consistent and reliable dataset over the continent. Trends were detected calculating the slope of Theil-Sen's line over the annual anomalies of streamflow volume.</p> <p>The results show annual streamflow volume trends emerged at European scale, with a marked negative tendency in Mediterranean regions (about −1 × 10<sup>3</sup> m<sup>3</sup>/(km<sup>2</sup> year)) and a generally positive trend in northern ones (about 0.5 × 10<sup>3</sup> m<sup>3</sup>/(km<sup>2</sup> year)). The annual streamflow volume trend patterns appear in agreement with the continental-scale climate change observations in response to climate change drivers. In the Mediterranean area, the declining of annual streamflow volumes started in 1965 and since early 80' volumes are consistently lower than the average.</p> <p>The spatio-temporal annual streamflow volume patterns observed in this work can help to contextualize short-term trends and regional studies already available in the scientific literature as well as to provide a valid benchmark for further accurate quantitative analysis on annual streamflow volumes.</p>
doi:10.5194/hess-2020-21 fatcat:loejhyhg5zcm3lrghm7ftyle3u