Abstract
This paper estimates the likely impacts of future climate change on streamflow, especially the hydrological extremes over the Yangtze River basin. The future climate was projected by the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment in East Asia (CORDEX-EA) initiative for the periods 2020–2049 under two representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 emission scenarios. The bias corrected outputs from five regional climate models (RCMs) were used in conjunction with the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) macroscale hydrological model to produce hydrological projections. For the future climate of the Yangtze River basin, outputs from an ensemble of RCMs indicate that the annual mean temperature will increase for 2020–2049 by 1.81 °C for RCP4.5 and by 2.26 °C for RCP8.5. The annual mean precipitation is projected to increase by 3.62% under RCP4.5 and 7.65% under RCP8.5. Overall, increases in precipitation are amplified in streamflow, and the change in streamflow also shows significant temporal and spatial variations and large divergence between regional climate models. At the same time, the maximum streamflow in different durations are also projected to increase at three mainstream gauging stations based on flood frequency analysis. In particular, larger increases in maximum 1-day streamflow (+14.24% on average) compared to 5-day and 15-day water volumes (+12.79% and +10.24%) indicate that this projected extreme streamflow increase would be primarily due to intense short-period rainfall events. It is necessary to consider the impacts of climate change in future water resource management.
Highlights
Global climate observations show an unprecedented warming rate of the atmosphere throughout the last century [1,2]
In the RCP4.5 (RCP8.5) emission scenario, the annual mean temperature is expected to rise on average by 1.81 ◦ C (2.26 ◦ C) and annual precipitation is expected to rise by 3.62% (7.65%) until the middle of this century; there was evidence of marked temporal and spatial variability (Table 3)
We present, to the best of our knowledge, the first examination of projected changes in the Yangtze River basin’s streamflow using a suite of regional climate models (RCMs) from CORDEX
Summary
Global climate observations show an unprecedented warming rate of the atmosphere throughout the last century [1,2]. Rising temperatures are expected to intensify the water cycle due to an increased atmospheric water vapor holding capacity [3,4], leading to the intensification of precipitation extremes as evidenced by both observation and climate model simulations [5,6,7]. Climate scientists warn that future climate change is unavoidable, these climate warming trends are expected to continue or even amplify [8], and we can expect considerable alterations to atmospheric water vapor concentrations, clouds, precipitation patterns, and runoff and streamflow patterns. Water 2018, 10, 1279 flooding frequency will increase in 42% and decrease in 18% of the global land area by the end of the 21st century. Jiang et al [15] and
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