Plausible impact of global climate change on water resources in the Tarim River Basin

Abstract

Combining the temperature and precipitation data from 77 climatological stations and the climatic and hydrological change data from three headstreams of the Tarim River: Hotan, Yarkant, and Aksu in the study area, the plausible association between climate change and the variability of water resources in the Tarim River Basin in recent years was investigated, the long-term trend of the hydrological time series including temperature, precipitation, and stream-flow was detected, and the possible association between the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and these three kinds of time series was tested. The results obtained in this study show that during the past years, the temperature experienced a significant monotonic increase at the speed of 5%, nearly 1℃ rise; the precipitation showed a significant decrease in the 1970s, and a significant increase in the 1980s and 1990s, the average annual precipitation was increased with the magnitude of 6.8 mm per decade. A step change occurred in both temperature and precipitation time series around 1986, which may be influenced by the global climate change. Climate change resulted in the increase of the streamflow at the headwater of the Tarim River, but the anthropogenic activities such as over-depletion of the surface water resulted in the decrease of the streamflow at the lower reaches of the Tarim River. The study result also showed that there is no significant association between the ENSO and the temperature, precipitation and streamflow.