Long Periods of Increased/Decreased Runoffs of Large Russian Rivers

Abstract

Long series of annual and seasonal runoffs of large Russian rivers (the Volga at Volgograd, the Don at Razdorskaya, the Yenisei at Igarka, and the Lena at Kyusyur) since the 1870s for the Russian Plain rivers and since the 1930s for the Siberian rivers have been analyzed. Long periods (phases) of increased and decreased water flow have been identified. The boundaries of contrast phases are determined with cumulative deviation curves in combination with Student’s test. The duration of the phases varies from 20–25 years to many decades (for runoff in low-water seasons of the Volga and Don). For the Volga and Don, the phases of decreased runoff are generally longer than increased flow phases (this is especially true for low-water seasons). The identified contrast phases show a statistically significant difference between the annual and seasonal runoffs, which varies from 10 to 65%. In the phases of increased flow, high-water years occur much more often than low-water years, and vice versa. In the period of current climate warming (since 1981), the changes in annual runoff relative to the calculated runoff of the reference period (from the 1930s to 1980) are opposing, i.e., the runoff decreased in the Don and increased in the Volga, Yenisei, and Lena. In this case, the changes are most significant in the Don. In the period of current climate warming, both the winter and snow-melt flood runoff has increased only for the Lena. At the same time, the contributions of climatic and anthropogenic factors to the changes in runoff differ significantly for each of the rivers under study.