Spain could face future drought threats according to new study

February 1, 2012 – SPAIN – A team at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena has designed a new method for calculating drought trends. Initial results suggest that by the year 2050 there could be a 15% increase compared to the droughts seen in 1990 in the Segura river basin. At the beginning of 2011, water levels in Spain’s reservoirs reached an average of 77.83% of total capacity. However, the lack of rain last year has now reduced the average to 62.01%. The droughts that Spain experiences year on year are one of the main concerns of agricultural workers who use up to 80% of a reservoir’s water for their crops. A new study at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT) has combined recorded data with the results from state-of-the-art regional climate change models to calculate the maximum length of droughts in detail. The results, which have been applied to the Segura river basin, show how “drought periods since the 1980’s onwards have notably intensified,” according to Sandra Garcia Galiano, one of the authors of the study. For Garcia Galiano and her team from the UPCT’s Water Resources R and D and I group, “semiarid basins, like that of the Segura River, are vulnerable to changes in rainfall. This creates uncertainty for agriculture.” The purpose of the study is to “deepen knowledge of plausible draught trends so that this information can then be used to strike a better balance between adaptation and mitigation measures.” –Terra Earth