Towards a better assessment of hydrological natural variability as a key adaptation strategy to climate change

尽管对气候变化对水资源的影响进行了大量研究，但很少有利益攸关方愿意承诺为遥远和不确定的未来制定适应战略。决策者更愿意适应投资回报率较短（<20年）的战略。然而，在20年的时间范围内，气候主要是由自然变异而不是由人类引起的变化所决定的。在许多情况下，基础设施不能很好地适应自然气候变化（更不用说气候变化），因为它基本上是在工程设计中被忽视，通常假设平稳随机过程。

Despite all the research done on the impacts of climate change on water resources, few stakeholders have been willing to commit to adaptation strategies for a distant and uncertain future. Decision makers are more prepared to adapt to strategies with a shorter return on investment (<20 years). Over a 20-year horizon however, climate is strongly dominated by natural variability and not by human-induced change. In many cases, infrastructures are not well adapted to natural climate variability (let alone climate change), because it is essentially overlooked in engineering design which usually assumes stationary stochastic processes.