Hydrological modelling in the climate change context

The study assesses the impact of climate change on surface water using an ensemble of five global climate models (GCMs)¿ regional climate models (RCMs) and two hydrological simulation models (HBV-light and GR4J) in the Dano catchment (Burkina Faso). The exploited GCM-RCM ensemble comes from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX-Africa) project and the dataset was not bias corrected. The two hydrological models were successfully calibrated and validated (NSE > 0.7) and good agreements between simulated and observed discharges were observed for both models. Compared to the reference period (1976-2005), the projected temperature consistently shows an increase for the future periods 2021-2050 and 2071-2100. As for the projected precipitation change signal, the trend is mixed for the GCM-RCM ensemble for the same future periods. The combined trends (increasing temperature and mixed precipitation signal) yielded projected surface water changes very similar to the projected precipitation change signal, i.e. increasing and decreasing discharge for the GCM-RCM ensemble.