Abstract
Climate change can bring about substantial alternatives of temperature and precipitation in the spatial and temporal patterns. These alternatives would impact the hydrological cycle and cause flood or drought events. This study has developed an ensemble climate-hydrology modeling system (ECHMS) for long-term streamflow assessment under changing climate. ECHMS consists of multiple climate scenarios (two global climate models (GCMs) and four representative concentration pathways (RCPs) emission scenarios), a stepwise-cluster downscaling method and semi-distributed land use-based runoff process (SLURP) model. ECHMS is able to reflect the uncertainties in climate scenarios, tackle the complex relationships (e.g., nonlinear/linear, discrete/continuous) between climate predictors and predictions without functional assumption, and capture the combination of snowmelt– and rainfall–runoff process with a simplicity of operation. Then, the developed ECHMS is applied to Kaidu watershed for analyzing the changes of streamflow during the 21st century. Results show that by 2099, the temperature increment in Kaidu watershed is mainly contributed by the warming in winter and spring. The precipitation will increase obviously in spring and autumn and decrease in winter. Multi-year average streamflow would range from 105.6 to 113.8 m3/s across all scenarios during the 21st century with an overall increasing trend. The maximum average increasing rate is 2.43 m3/s per decade in October and the minimum is 0.26 m3/s per decade in January. Streamflow change in spring is more sensitive to climate change due to its complex runoff generation process. The obtained results can effectively identify future streamflow changing trends and help manage water resources for decision makers.
Highlights
The differences in temperature are mainly attributed to the varied physical mechanisms and conditions of climate models and RCPs
RCP 8.5 and the smallest under RCP 2.6. This is due to the fact that RCP8.5 is a non-climate-policy scenario, resulting in severe changes in climate and RCP2.6 represents a rigorous climate policy, mostly to limit greenhouse gas emissions and, low climate change impacts
An ensemble climate-hydrology modeling system (ECHMS) has been developed for assessing the streamflow in Kaidu watershed
Summary
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC AR5), the global mean surface temperature is likely to increase by 0.3–4.8 ◦ C relative to the base period of 1986–2005 [3,4]. Climate change brings about substantial alternatives of precipitation in the spatial and temporal patterns. These changes would have implications for evaporation, snowmelt, infiltration and runoff, altering the hydrological cycle and causing flood or drought events [5]. Accompanying with the increasing demands for water resources in recent years, the security of water resources is challenged by climate change [6]. For pursuing sustainable water resources management in the context of climate change, it is urgent to clearly understand how climate change influences streamflow generation from the perspective of water supply
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