Impact of Climatic Variations on Storage Reservoir Systems

Kaczmarek, Z. (1990). Impact of Climatic Variations on Storage Reservoir Systems. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-90-020

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Abstract

Within IIASA's Enironment Program, one of the objectives of the Water Resources Project is to investigate the impact of environmental and economic changes on water resources management. The climate/water resources problem raises a number of scientific questions that must be addressed to answer policy needs reflecting potential effects of global climatic change on regional water management, and possible adaptive measures that could be taken. Historically water resource systems have been designed on the assumption that future climatic and hydrologic variations might be expected to be similar to those observed during the last century. However, man's activity may cause significant influence on the hydrological regime in various parts of the earth.

This paper concerns the possible impacts of long-term hydrological non-stationarity on design and operation of water reservoir systems. As man-made lakes are essential tools in controlling the effects of hydrological variability, the paper considers the relationship between storage capacity, water demand and various performance criteria of reservoir management for a number of scenarios. It may be expected that the impact of climatic change can be detected particularly well in those elements of water systems that accumulate climatic impacts over long periods, such as groundwater, lakes and reservoirs. It may be seen from the conclusions of the paper that even relatively small changes in the stochastic characteristics of the inflow to the reservoir may be amplified into much larger changes in reliability and other operational criteria.

The application of methodological tools presented here is illustrated by the Lake Kariba case study. This man-made impoundment, one of the largest in the world, is located in the Zambezi river basin. In the past three years, Water Resources Project has been deeply involved in studying water-oriented policy problems in southern Africa in close cooperation with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC). This shows not only IIASA's interest in problems of the developing countries, but also reflects the interconnection between global environmental processes and regional economic and technical problems.

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