Consequences of climate change over La Plata Basin. Precipitation versus evaporation

BLAZQUEZ J.

Santo Domingo

Workshop; Workshop on Latin-America and Caribbean CORDEX LAC: Phase II; 2014

According to the IPCC AR4 (and AR5) Report, La Plata Basin will likely experience an increase in temperature and an increase in precipitation during 21st century (specially at the end). At the same time, an increment in temperature implies an increase in surface evaporation. While most models have shown that the precipitation effect will be larger than the temperature effect over La Plata Basin, it will be interesting to study if that trend will maintain in the new generation models (regional or global). For that reason it is propose to analyze the precipitation and evaporation signal according to CORDEX database models for future climate and identify regions of La Plata Basin of high risk/impact of increase in precipitation. This analysis will be done by approximating the water budget subtracting precipitation and evaporation. This new variable is the runoff. Positive values of runoff imply increment of river flows or soil moisture. Why is important for La Plata Basin region to study the runoff? The fact that precipitation effect is more important than evaporation effect is likely to impact in an increment of river flow. For one side this would be very convenient to increase hydro-electric power generation, but on the other hand, dramatic flooding over regions located next to the rivers would occur.So taking into account these statements, governments should start making plans to move people who live in regions vulnerable to flooding to safe areas, or start to build the required infrastructure that could help people to avoid the flood. To take advantage of the increase in the flow of the rivers, governments should build new dam or strengthen those who are already built to contain more water and so generate more hydro-electric power.This analysis proposed would help to identify in detail those regions which are vulnerable to changes in net precipitation and contribute with people who are in charge of making adaptation plans for La Plata Basin region.