Hydrological Impacts of Climate Change Simulated by HIMS Models in the Luanhe River Basin, North China

Abstract

This paper applied a HIMS (hydroinformatic modeling system) model to simulate streamflow in the Luanhe River Basin. This model was compared with SIMHYD and XAJ models for eight sub-basins of the Luanhe River. The results showed HIMS model performed better than SIMHYD and XAJ models, in these areas. We then investigated the streamflow response to climate changes in the different sub-basins. Twenty hypothetical climate change scenarios (perturbed temperatures and precipitation) were used to test the sensitivity of HIMS model simulated annual and mean monthly streamflow. Our results demonstrated that: (i) the annual streamflow was positively related to precipitation, and there was a negative relationship between streamflow and temperature for all the eight sub-basins; (ii) in all sub-basins, the relationship of annual streamflow change to precipitation change was highly non-linear, but the relationship of annual streamflow change with temperature change was approximately linear; (iii) the annual streamflow response to precipitation change was more sensitive when increasing than decreasing; (iv) the annual streamflow response to climate change was more sensitive in the Xingzhouhe River sub-basin, followed by the Wuliehe River sub-basin, and the Sahe River sub-basin was least sensitive; (iv) there were few differences in inner-streamflow response to climate change in the Laoniuhe, Yimatuhe, and Yixunhe Rivers. But for other rivers, when the temperature changed, larger streamflow differences happened in winter and summer; when the precipitation decreased or was unchanged, the larger differences happened in winter months, and when the precipitation increased, larger differences happened in winter and summer.