Attribution of streamflow changes to future climate projections across Europe

Ongoing warming strongly influences the water cycle at the regional scale and increases concerns about future streamflow changes with consequences for water availability and potential intensification of hydrological extremes, i.e. floods and droughts. Detecting and identifying controlling factors of future streamflow changes is a key point to understand the hydrological response to changing climate and develop tailored strategies for the water resources management and risk adaption. In this study we investigate the streamflow changes, including extremes, across Europe in the mid (2041-2070) and late (2070-2099) century. We used streamflow simulations from the E-HYPE hydrological model and the EURO-CORDEX climate model projections. The sensitivity of streamflow changes to the climatic factors compared to the reference period (1981-2010) is evaluated with the climatic elasticity method based on the Budyko framework. Moreover, we assess the spatial consistency and uncertainty of the streamflow changes due to the ensemble variability. Results show that the sensitivity of streamflow changes to climatic change varies depending on the climatic gradient and physiographic properties of the domain.