RheinBlick2050 is an

environmental science Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geograp ...

research project on the impacts of regional climate change on

discharge Discharge may refer to Expel or let go * Discharge, the act of firing a gun * Discharge, or termination of employment, the end of an employee's duration with an employer * Military discharge, the release of a member of the armed forces from serv ...

of the Rhine River and its major tributaries (here:

Moselle The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it jo ...

and Main rivers) in Central Europe. The project runtime was from January 2008 until September 2010, initiated by and coordinated on behalf of the International Commission for the Hydrology of the Rhine Basin (CHR). {{Cite book, url=http://www.chr-khr.org/files/CHR_I-23.pdf, title=Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Discharge in the Rhine River Basin: Results of the RheinBlick2050 Project, first1=K., last1=Görgen, first2=J., last2=Beersma, first3=G., last3=Brahmer, first4=H., last4=Buiteveld, first5=M., last5=Carambia, first6=O., last6=de Keizer, first7=P., last7=Krahe, first8=E., last8=Nilson, first9=R., last9=Lammersen, first10=C., last10=Perrin, first11=D., last11=Volken, format=PDF, id=CHR report I-23, pages=229, year=2010, publisher=International Commission for the Hydrology of the Rhine Basin (CHR), Lelystad, accessdate=April 1, 2010, isbn=978-90-70980-35-1, url-status=dead, archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120321214534/http://www.chr-khr.org/files/CHR_I-23.pdf, archivedate=March 21, 2012

Motivation

Regional climate change may lead to modified hydrometeorological regimes which in turn affect river discharge; depending on the vulnerability and sensitivity of the affected natural or managed systems this has variable impacts (on ecology, economy,

infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...

, transport,

energy production Energy development is the field of activities focused on obtaining sources of energy from natural resources. These activities include production of renewable, nuclear, and fossil fuel derived sources of energy, and for the recovery and reuse ...

, water management, etc.). RheinBlick2050 deals solely with impacts, i.e. physical system changes, not with adaptation or mitigation. One of the RheinBlick2050 project's characteristics is that it provides a joint, concerted, trans-boundary view on discharge changes, with institutions participating in the project consortium from nearly all riparian countries of the Rhine basin. Those various institutions and projects provided expertise, data, methods, software tools and numerical model simulations to a common research framework.

Data, Methods and Experiment Design

The experiment design follows a typical hydrological climate change impact study: In a data-synthesis, multi-model ensemble approach a dedicated greenhouse gas emission scenario (here mainly SRES A1B) is used with various global climate models (GCM) (mainly ECHAM5 and

HadCM3 HadCM3 (abbreviation for ''Hadley Centre Coupled Model, version 3'') is a coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model (AOGCM) developed at the Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom. It was one of the major models used in the IPCC Third Asse ...

), regionalized via a dynamical downscaling using regional climate models (RCM). Based on those readily available datasets, after an extensive model chain evaluation and selection, a correction of systematic biases in the daily air temperature and precipitation outputs of the RCMs is done. These fields are used to finally drive the hydrological models (mainly HBV). The hydrological model simulation results are used to analyze changes (expressed as scenario bandwidths and tendencies) in average discharge, low-flow and high-flow diagnostics for selected gauging stations along the Rhine and its major tributaries ( Basel, Maxau, Worms,

Kaub Kaub (old spelling: ''Caub'') is a town in Germany, state Rhineland-Palatinate, district Rhein-Lahn-Kreis. It is part of the municipality (''Verbandsgemeinde'') Loreley. It is located on the right bank of the Rhine, approx. 50 km west from Wi ...

, Cologne,

Lobith Lobith is a village in the Dutch province of Gelderland. It is located in the municipality of Zevenaar. Traditionally, it is said that the Rhine enters the Netherlands at Lobith, although in reality, this happens about 4 km further upstream, ...

Raunheim Raunheim is a town in Groß-Gerau district in Hesse, Germany and a part of the Frankfurt Urban Region as well as the Frankfurt Rhein-Main Region. Geography Location Raunheim lies in the Frankfurt Rhein-Main Region between Frankfurt am Main (2 ...

and Trier).

Project consortium

* http://www.cemagref.fr Cemagref (France) * http://www.deltares.nl Deltares (The Netherlands) * http://www.bafg.de Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) (Germany) * Federal Office for the Environment (Switzerland) * http://www.hlnug.de Hessisches Landesamt für Naturschutz, Umwelt und Geologie (HLNUG) (Germany) * http://www.lippmann.lu Public Research Centre - Gabriel Lippmann (CRP-GL) (G.D. of Luxembourg), project coordination * http://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl Rijkswaterstaat Centre for Water Management (RWS) (The Netherlands) * http://www.knmi.nl Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) (The Netherlands) (alphabetical order)

References

Sources

Hydrology and Water Resources Management, Vol. 52, No. 4, 2008

Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine

Deltas in Times of Climate Change, Rotterdam 2010 conference, meeting report, page 20

* ttp://www.unesco.de/4881.html UNESCO heute online, Deutsche UNESCO-Kommission e.V.
Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

Readers Edition

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20110131181504/http://www.chr-khr.org/en/projects/rheinblick2050 RheinBlick2050 homepage * http://www.chr-khr.org CHR homepage * http://www.chr-khr.org/en/publications CHR publications Climatological research Europe Hydrology models