Assessing the Impacts of Future Climate Change on Hydrology in Huang-Huai-Hai Region in China Using the PRECIS and VIC Models

Abstract

AbstractThe climate change impact on hydrology in China’s Huang-Huai-Hai (H-H-H) region was assessed in this study. Both variations in mean monthly and annual runoff and occurrences of extreme events including flood and drought were examined for two future periods (2001–2030 and 2016–2045) in the whole region. The projected daily maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation from the PRECIS (providing regional climates for impacts studies) regional climate model were used to drive the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) hydrology model. Variable infiltration capacity was run over a regional domain of 408 grid points at a spatial resolution of 50×50 km. The result shows that PRECIS projects increase in both future temperature (0.8–1.5°C) and precipitation (3.5–7.3%) in the H-H-H region under A2 and B2 scenarios of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES). Over the entire H-H-H region, VIC projects increase 11.3 and 13.7% in mean annual r...