Inland waterways are vulnerable to climate change as river navigation depends on water levels. Droughts can severely disrupt inland navigation services by reducing water levels either to completely non-navigable ones or to levels that oblige operators to reduce vessel load. We analyse the impacts of droughts induced by climate change using projections of river discharge data provided by eleven different climate model runs. We consider location specific characteristics by focusing the analysis on four specific locations of the Rhine and the Danube where a substantial part of the total freight activity in the European Union (EU) takes place. For the majority of the cases and scenarios considered, a decrease of the number of low water level days is projected, leading to fewer drought related disruptions in the operation of the inland waterway transport system. Although the uncertainties from the climate projections should not be neglected, the navigation sector could benefit from global warming which means that European inland waterways might be one of the few sectors where climate change can have negligible, or even positive, impact. The average economic benefit, for the cases considered, from the decrease of low water levels by the end of the century is projected to be almost €8million annually.

内陆水道易受气候变化的影响，因为河流航行取决于水位。干旱会通过将水位降低到完全不可通行的水位或迫使操作员减少船载的水位，从而严重破坏内陆航行服务。我们使用由11种不同气候模式运行提供的河流流量数据预测来分析气候变化引发的干旱影响。我们通过将分析集中在莱茵河和多瑙河的四个特定地点来考虑特定地点的特征，这些地点在欧盟（EU）的总货运活动中占很大比例。对于大多数考虑的情况和方案，预计低水位天数的减少，减少了与干旱有关的内陆水路运输系统的运行。尽管不应忽略气候预测带来的不确定性，但航海部门可能会从全球变暖中受益，这意味着欧洲内陆水道可能是为数不多的对气候变化可能产生微不足道甚至产生积极影响的部门之一。对于所考虑的案例，到本世纪末，由于低水位的减少，平均经济收益预计每年将近800万欧元。