Impact of climate change on hydro-climatic variables in Xiangjiang River basin, China

Abstract

Xiangjiang River basin, one of the most important economic belts in Hunan Province, has great influences on Dongting Lake's flood storage capacity. Recently, climatic anomaly has seriously affected Xiangjiang River basin's integrated water resources management. In this paper, the outputs of HadCM3 (Hadley Centre Coupled Model, version 3) under A2 and B2 scenarios were downscaled to the basin with Automated Statistical Downscaling (ASD) model. By applying these downscaled scenarios as input into Xin'anjiang model, streamflow in 2011–2099 was predicted in the basin. And then the changing trends of temperature, precipitation and streamflow in the history (from 1959 to 2008) and future (from 2011 to 2099) were examined by using Mann-Kendall method. Results showed the changing trends of those hydro-climatic variables, such as temperature, precipitation and streamflow, at the significant level α=0.05 in the history and future under the A2 and B2 scenarios of HadCM3, which would provide a scientific reference to the water resources management in the Xiangjiang basin.