Climate Change Impacts in the Design of Drainage Systems: Case Study of Portugal
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 141, Issue 2
Abstract
This paper aims to assess the necessity of updating the intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves used in Portugal to design building storm-water drainage systems. A comparative analysis of the design was performed for the three predefined rainfall regions in Portugal using the IDF curves currently in use and estimated for future decades. Data for recent and future climate conditions simulated by a global and regional climate model chain are used to estimate possible changes of rainfall extremes and its implications for the drainage systems. The methodology includes the disaggregation of precipitation up to subhourly scales, the robust development of IDF curves, and the correction of model bias. Obtained results indicate that projected changes are largest for the plains in southern Portugal (5–33%) than for mountainous regions (3–9%) and that these trends are consistent with projected changes in the long-term 95th percentile of the daily precipitation throughout the 21st century. The authors conclude there is a need to review the current precipitation regime classification and change the new drainage systems towards larger dimensions to mitigate the projected changes in extreme precipitation.
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Acknowledgments
We thank the MPI for Meteorology (Germany), the WDCC/CERA database and the COSMO-CLM community for providing the COSMO-CLM data. This work was supported by European Union Funds (FEDER/COMPETE—Operational Competitiveness Programme) and by Portuguese national funds (FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) under the project PEst-OE/AGR/UI4033/2014. We thank Sven Ulbrich (University Cologne) for help with data handling, Sandra Dias (UTAD), Fátima Ferreira (UTAD) and Cristina Costa (ISEGI) for discussions. We acknowledge the E-OBS dataset from the EU-FP6 project ENSEMBLES (http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com) and the data providers in the ECA&D project (http://www.ecad.eu).
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Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 141 • Issue 2 • February 2015
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© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 4, 2014
Accepted: Jun 10, 2014
Published online: Jul 21, 2014
Discussion open until: Dec 21, 2014
Published in print: Feb 1, 2015
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