Hydroclimatic Variability at Local, Regional and Global Scales

Scott Curtis

doi:10.3390/w12051490

Abstract

Hydroclimate is non-stationary and varies in often unpredictable ways on local, regional and global scales, which can lead to water insecurity. This editorial relates the advances and challenges in our understanding of the spatio-temporal relationship between climate variability and change and the components of the hydrologic cycle through the lens of six articles, which contributed to the Water Special Issue: Hydroclimatic Variability at Local, Regional and Global Scales. The relationship between the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and precipitation, temperature, and evapotranspiration is examined within the Indian Summer monsoon, gauge-based precipitation datasets are intercompared over Pakistan, trends in precipitation, temperature, and streamflow are investigated in Ethiopia and China, alternate configurations of hydroclimate modeling are assessed over Canada, and finally, future limitations in groundwater supply are presented for Italy.

Highlights

Long-term water resource planning is a necessity, especially in areas of community development and population growth
There has been a rapid growth in relating climate variability and change to fresh water supply and hazards and this Special Issue, co-edited with Dr Glenn McGregor from Durham University, UK contributes to the body of literature, with six significant peer-reviewed papers covering advances in trend analysis and hydroclimate modeling
“after 2060 the length of periods with discharge lower than the length of thresholds is expected to increase” [13], prompting the need for additional sources of water. This special section of the journal Water advances the field of hydroclimatology, through six significant contributions covering various parts of the world

Summary

Introduction

Long-term water resource planning is a necessity, especially in areas of community development and population growth. Fresh water supply is often sourced from an accessible and/or abundant local reservoir(s) of the hydrologic cycle. This cycle is often vulnerable to local, regional and global climate variability, and too much or too little of one component of the cycle (e.g., rainfall) has cascading effects in time and space, impacting other components (e.g., groundwater). There has been a rapid growth in relating climate variability and change to fresh water supply and hazards and this Special Issue, co-edited with Dr Glenn McGregor from Durham University, UK contributes to the body of literature, with six significant peer-reviewed papers covering advances in trend analysis and hydroclimate modeling. The studies are linked in that they hypothesize relationships among multiple hydroclimatological variables

Contributed Papers

Findings

Conclusions