Climate change impacts on groundwater recharge in the Chiba catchment, Cap-Bon peninsula (Tunisia)

Asma Chemingui, Faten Jarraya Horriche, Sihem Ben Abdallah, Mauro Sulis, Claudio Paniconi

In the proceedings of: GeoMontréal 2013: 66th Canadian Geotechnical Conference; 11th joint with IAH-CNC

Session: Impacts of Climate Change

ABSTRACT: The semi-arid Mediterranean climate exhibits pronounced spatio-temporal variability, particularly with regards to rainfall. This makes the Cap-Bon peninsula of northeastern Tunisia, the region of interest for this study, inherently prone to cyclical droughts and floods. Understanding past variations in climate and predicting future ones has thus become essential for enhancing the capacity of national and regional governments and other stakeholders to plan climate change adaptation measures. A surfaceÑsubsurface coupled hydrological model (CATHY) is used to investigate, for a range of climate change scenarios, the spatio-temporal patterns of response variables such as groundwater recharge, water levels, and streamflow of the Chiba catchment (200 km2). Runs of the model assume the emission scenario A1B proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1951 to 2100 at a daily scale. This work is being undertaken in a broader context that includes other hydrological models (WaSiM and SWAT for the Chiba catchment) and that will seek to address issues of uncertainty arising from input data and model parameterization errors and biases. R…SUM… Le climat semi-arid medeterranien est caract”ris” par une variabilit” spatio-temporelle accentu”e des pr”cipitations. Ce qui a fait de la peninsule de Cap-Bon situ”e au Nord-east de la tunisie,la r”gion de la pr”sente ”tude, particuli‘rement sujette ‹ des s”cheresses cyclyques et des inondation. LÕanalyse de lÕhistorique des variations climatiques et la pr”diction des futures changements est devenu essentiel afin dÕaider les gestionnaires des ressources en eaux ‹ lÕ”chelle nationale et r”gionale ainsi que les autres binificiaires ‹ planifier des mesures dÕadaptations aux changements climatiques. Le mod‘le hydrologique CATHY est utilis” pour ”tudier, pour un ensemble de sc”narios de changements climatiques, lÕimpact de ses derniers sur la variation spatio-temporelle de la recharge des aquifers, des niveaux pi”zom‘triques et des d”bits de rivi‘re pour le bassin de Chiba (200 km2). Les simulations du mod‘le sont bas” sur les ”missions du sc”nario A1B fourni par lÕIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) de 1951 au 2100 ‹ une ”chelle journali‘re. Ce travail est men” dans un contexte plus large qui comprend d'autres mod‘les hydrologiques (WaSiM et SWAT pour le bassin versant de Chiba) et qui cherchera ‹ aborder les questions de l'incertitude d”coulant des erreurs et des bias relatifs aux donn”es et aux param‘tres du mod‘le.

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