across 35 215 catchments which cover a wide range of pan-European physiographic and anthropogenic characteristics.

Riparian wetlands are disappearing worldwide due to altered river flow regimes. The WaterGAP3 modeling framework is used to compare modified to natural flow regimes at 93 Ramsar sites. Results indicate that water resource management seriously impairs inundation patterns at 29 % of the sites. New dam initiatives are likely to affect especially wetlands located in South America, Asia, and the Balkan Peninsula. Hotspots for climate change impacts could be eastern Europe and South America.

Agricultural production in the Ganges River basin is affected by the water shortage in the dry months, while the excess water during the rainy season causes floods in the downstream. Annual total surface runoff generated in the basin is about 298seldom included in global water resource assessments based on numerical simulations. We first developed a global model to estimate the areal extent and production of seawater desalination which was designed to be incorporated with global hydrological models. The model was applied to future periods under three distinct socioeconomic conditions.

The western African Sahel region has been one of the most important research areas for studying climatic variability due to its fragile climate conditions. Between 1950 and 2012, summer rainfall in the Sahel changed from a multi-decadal decreasing trend to an increasing trend (positive trend shift) in the mid-1980s. We found that this trend shift was synchronous with similar trend shifts in global oceanic evaporation and in land precipitation on all continents except the Americas.

Impacts of climate change on hydropower