How climate change will affect walloon water resources?

Climate change projections for Wallonia show an increase of rainfall intensity in winter and an increase of dry spells in summer.

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How this will affect water resources in Wallonia remain unclear. This master thesis project has several objectives: (1) gather information on the current state of waloon hydrological resources; (2) analyze the trends over the last 30 years; and (3) with the help of a hydrological model, evaluate how these resources will evolve in the future.

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Objectives 1 and 2 will be based on data analyzes of long-term time series of water balances of all walloon basins. Objective 3 will be carried out using process-based model of a 4-D soil hydrological model run at fin grid over the western Europe on supercomputers  at Forschungszentrum Juelich. After comparing past simulations with observed data, we will investigate different climate scenarios and analyze basins under threat.

This Master thesis will be carried out in collaboration with Alice Alonso. Stays at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (Germany) can be envisaged.