Changes to the runoff of Canadian ecozones under a doubled CO2 atmosphere

Abstract

Increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases may change the hydrology of a number of Canada's regions. This will have an impact on aquatic and wetland ecosystems as well as municipal, industrial, and power generation uses. It is thus important to get an estimate of the potential changes to the Canadian hydrological cycle in order to make intelligent decisions concerning mitigation factors that society may be forced to undertake. We divided Canada into ecoclimatologically similar regions called "ecozones." We developed two month-stepped temperature-precipitation-runoff models for the country using an artificial intelligence neural network (ANN) approach. We modified input temperature and precipitation variables in the ANN models to match those predicted by the Canadian Climate Centre General Circulation Model II for a doubled CO2 atmosphere and calculated new monthly equilibrium runoff predictions. Our results predict that much of Canada will experience higher annual runoff than is currently the case. The timing of runoff will change significantly in a number of the ecozones, as we show that in many regions, peak runoff will occur approximately 1 month earlier than is currently the case. The ANN model did not work as well for basins in the Prairie ecozone, as we could not develop a good model with data from regulated rivers.