More severe hydrological drought events emerge at different warming levels over the Wudinghe watershed in northern China

Yang Jiao,Xing Yuan

doi:10.5194/hess-23-621-2019

Abstract

Abstract. Assessment of changes in hydrological droughts at specific warming levels is important for an adaptive water resources management with consideration of the 2015 Paris Agreement. However, most studies focused on the response of drought frequency to the warming and neglected other drought characteristics, including severity. By using a semiarid watershed in northern China (i.e., Wudinghe) as an example, here we show less frequent but more severe hydrological drought events emerge at 1.5, 2 and 3 ∘C warming levels. We used meteorological forcings from eight Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate models under four representative concentration pathways, to drive a newly developed land surface hydrological model to simulate streamflow, and analyzed historical and future hydrological drought characteristics based on the standardized streamflow index. The Wudinghe watershed will reach the 1.5, 2 and 3 ∘C warming levels around 2015–2034, 2032–2051 and 2060–2079, with an increase in precipitation of 8 %, 9 % and 18 % and runoff of 27 %, 19 % and 44 %, and a drop in hydrological drought frequency of 11 %, 26 % and 23 % as compared to the baseline period (1986–2005). However, the drought severity will rise dramatically by 184 %, 116 % and 184 %, which is mainly caused by the increased variability in precipitation and evapotranspiration. The climate models and the land surface hydrological model contribute to more than 80 % of total uncertainties in the future projection of precipitation and hydrological droughts. This study suggests that different aspects of hydrological droughts should be carefully investigated when assessing the impact of 1.5, 2 and 3 ∘C global warming.

Highlights

Global warming has affected both natural and artificial systems across continents, bringing a lot of ecohydrological crises to many countries (Gitay et al, 2002; Tirado et al, 2010; Thornton et al, 2014)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) concluded that global average surface air temperature increased by 0.61 ◦C in 1986–2005 compared to preindustrial periods (IPCC, 2014a)
In order to mitigate global warming, the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) emphasized in the Paris Agreement that the increase in global average temperature should be controlled within 2 ◦C above preindustrial levels, and further efforts should be made to limit it below 1.5 ◦C

Summary

Introduction

Global warming has affected both natural and artificial systems across continents, bringing a lot of ecohydrological crises to many countries (Gitay et al, 2002; Tirado et al, 2010; Thornton et al, 2014). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) concluded that global average surface air temperature increased by 0.61 ◦C in 1986–2005 compared to preindustrial periods (IPCC, 2014a). We chose a newly developed land surface hydrological model, CLM-GBHM, to simulate historical and future streamflow. This model was first developed and applied in the Wudinghe watershed at 0.01◦ (Jiao et al, 2017) and the Yellow River basin at 0.05◦ resolution (Sheng et al, 2017). Standardized streamflow index (SSI) simulations from CLM-GBHM were compared with the observed records during the baseline period, and the model performed well with a correlative coefficient of 0.53 (p < 0.01). A 20-year moving window, which has the same length of the baseline period, was used to determine the first period reaching a specific warming level for each combination, with the period median year referred to as the “crossing year”

Results

Discussion

Conclusion