A stochastic methodology to assess the impact of climate change on the Eugui hydrological dam safety (Spain) with an ensemble of climate projections.

Climate change is increasing frequency and magnitude of precipitation extremes and floods. Increasing design floods in the future could lead to underestimated design capacities of current spillways, increasing the probability of dam overtopping. Therefore, new methodologies are required for assessing hydrological dam safety considering climate change. Moreover, uncertainty should be accounted to properly assess future changes in overtopping probabilities. This study presents a methodology to assess hydrological dam safety considering the impact of climate change on inflow hydrographs and initial reservoir water levels in flood events, quantifying the uncertainty in estimations. The methodology is applied to the Eugui Dam in the River Arga catchment (Spain), upstream the city of Pamplona.