Sub chapter 2.3.1. Hydrological impacts of climate change in North African countries
Countries in North Africa with a semi arid Mediterranean climate are facing water scarcity and high inter annual variability of their water resources. Many dams and reservoirs have been built in recent decades to collect surface water and improve the management of existing water resources (Figure 1) However climate projections for this region indicate a possible decrease in precipitation together with an increase in temperature that could result in increased evaporation (Schilling et al. 2012) Evaluating the potential impacts of climate change on water resources is thus of particular importance in this region. To quantify the impacts of climate change on hydrology, climate model outputs need to be combined with the outputs of hydrological models. Climate models provide simulations up to the year 2100, either at large scale (global circulation models) or at regional scale (regional climate models) Most climate models outputs cannot be used directly in hydrological models because the spatial scales do not match or because of a systematic bias in the model outputs, particularly for precipitation. Downscaling or bias correction techniques thus need to be applied