Effects of mid-twenty-first century climate and land cover change on the hydrology of the Puget Sound basin, Washington
TL;DR: In this article, the potential impacts of projected future land cover and climate change on the hydrology of the Puget Sound basin, Washington, in the mid-twenty-first century were studied.
Abstract: The distributed hydrology–soil–vegetation model (DHSVM) was used to study the potential impacts of projected future land cover and climate change on the hydrology of the Puget Sound basin, Washington, in the mid-twenty-first century. A 60-year climate model output, archived for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), was statistically downscaled and used as input to DHSVM. From the DHSVM output, we extracted multi-decadal averages of seasonal streamflow, annual maximum flow, snow water equivalent (SWE), and evapotranspiration centred around 2030 and 2050. Future land cover was represented by a 2027 projection, which was extended to 2050, and DHSVM was run (with current climate) for these future land cover projections. In general, the climate change signal alone on sub-basin streamflow was evidenced primarily through changes in the timing of winter and spring runoff, and slight increases in the annual runoff. Runoff changes in the uplands were attributable both to climate (increased winter precipitation, less snow) and land cover change (mostly reduced vegetation maturity). The most climatically sensitive parts of the uplands were in areas where the current winter precipitation is in the rain–snow transition zone. Changes in land cover were generally more important than climate change in the lowlands, where a substantial change to more urbanized land use and increased runoff was predicted. Both the annual total and seasonal distribution of freshwater flux to Puget Sound are more sensitive to climate change impacts than to land cover change, primarily because most of the runoff originates in the uplands. Both climate and land cover change slightly increase the annual freshwater flux to Puget Sound. Changes in the seasonal distribution of freshwater flux are mostly related to climate change, and consist of double-digit increases in winter flows and decreases in summer and fall flows. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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TL;DR: In this paper, a modified Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model was employed to better understand climate change impact and long-term and recent land cover/use change impact as it relates to the "Grain for Green Project" and "Three Rivers Source Region Reserve" on water resources by examining mechanisms behind observed streamflow changes.
187 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the impacts of future climate change on water balance for the headwater basins of six major rivers in the Tibetan Plateau are assessed using the well-established VIC-glacier land surface hydrological model driven by composite projections of 20 CMIP5 GCMs under scenarios RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5.
176 citations
Cites methods from "Effects of mid-twenty-first century..."
...Similar to the approach used in Adam et al. (2009), Elsner et al. (2010), and Cuo et al. (2011), here, the monthly change factors for each scenario are calculated by comparing the monthly means of the 20 GCM outputs for the 30-year future time slices (2011-2040 and 2041-2070) to the monthly…...
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TL;DR: In this article, a watershed hydrology model and an estuarine hydrodynamics model, in a one-way coupling, were used to investigate the estuarial hydrodynamic response to sea-level rise and change in river flow due to the effect of future climate and LULC changes in the Snohomish River estuary, Washington, USA.
Abstract: Understanding the response of river flow and estuarine hydrodynamics to climate change, land-use/land-cover change (LULC), and sea-level rise is essential to managing water resources and stress on living organisms under these changing conditions. This paper presents a modeling study using a watershed hydrology model and an estuarine hydrodynamic model, in a one-way coupling, to investigate the estuarine hydrodynamic response to sea-level rise and change in river flow due to the effect of future climate and LULC changes in the Snohomish River estuary, Washington, USA. A set of hydrodynamic variables, including salinity intrusion points, average water depth, and salinity of the inundated area, were used to quantify the estuarine response to river flow and sea-level rise. Model results suggest that salinity intrusion points in the Snohomish River estuary and the average salinity of the inundated areas are a nonlinear function of river flow, although the average water depth in the inundated area is approximately linear with river flow. Future climate changes will shift salinity intrusion points further upstream under low flow conditions and further downstream under high flow conditions. In contrast, under the future LULC change scenario, the salinity intrusion point will shift downstream under both low and high flow conditions, compared to present conditions. The model results also suggest that the average water depth in the inundated areas increases linearly with sea-level rise but at a slower rate, and the average salinity in the inundated areas increases linearly with sea-level rise; however, the response of salinity intrusion points in the river to sea-level rise is strongly nonlinear.
114 citations
Abstract: This paper presents a modelling study on the spatial and temporal variability of climate-induced hydrologic changes in the Fraser River basin, British Columbia, Canada. This large basin presents a unique modelling case due to its physiographic heterogeneity and the potentially large implications of changes to its hydrologic regime. The macro-scale Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrologic model was employed to simulate 30-year baseline (1970s) and future (2050s) hydrologic regimes based on climate forcings derived from eight global climate models (GCMs) runs under three emissions scenarios (B1, A1B and A2). Bias Corrected Spatial Disaggregation was used to statistically downscale GCM outputs to the resolution of the VIC model (1/16°). The modelled future scenarios for the 11 sub-basins and three regions (eastern mountains, central plateau and coastal mountains) of the FRB exhibit spatially varied responses, such as, shifts from snow-dominant to hybrid regime in the eastern and coastal mountains and hybrid to rain-dominant regime in the central plateau region. The analysis of temporal changes illustrated considerable uncertainties in the projections obtained from an ensemble of GCMs and emission scenarios. However, direction of changes obtained from the GCM ensembles and emissions scenarios are consistent amongst one another. The most significant temporal changes could include earlier onsets of snowmelt-driven peak discharge, increased winter and spring runoff and decreased summer runoff. The projected winter runoff increases and summer decreases are more pronounced in the central plateau region. The results also revealed increases in the total annual discharge and decreases in the 30-year mean of the peak annual discharge. Such climate-induced changes could have implications for water resources management in the region. The spatially and temporally varied hydro-climatic projections and their range of projections can be used for local-scale adaptation in this important water resource system for British Columbia. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
103 citations
Cites background from "Effects of mid-twenty-first century..."
...Similarly, a hydrologic projection study of the Puget Sound basin by Cuo et al. (2011) found shifts to mixed snow-rain-dominated hydrographs in presently snowdominated basins and increases in December-January flow in the rain-dominated basins....
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TL;DR: In this article, Gridded daily precipitation, temperature minima and maxima, and wind speed are generated for the northern Tibetan Plateau (NTP) for 1957-2009 using observations from 81 surface stations.
Abstract: Gridded daily precipitation, temperature minima and maxima, and wind speed are generated for the northern Tibetan Plateau (NTP) for 1957–2009 using observations from 81 surface stations Evaluation reveals reasonable quality and suitability of the gridded data for climate and hydrology analysis The Mann–Kendall trends of various climate elements of the gridded data show that NTP has in general experienced annually increasing temperature and decreasing wind speed but spatially varied precipitation changes The northwest (northeast) NTP became dryer (wetter), while there were insignificant changes in precipitation in the south Snowfall has decreased along high mountain ranges during the wet and warm season Averaged over the entire NTP, snowfall, temperature minima and maxima, and wind speed experienced statistically significant linear trends at rates of −052 mm yr−1 (water equivalent), +004°C yr−1, +003°C yr−1, and −001 m s−1 yr−1, respectively Correlation between precipitation/wind speed an
98 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas (excluding Antarctica) at a spatial resolution of 30 arc s (often referred to as 1-km spatial resolution).
Abstract: We developed interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas (excluding Antarctica) at a spatial resolution of 30 arc s (often referred to as 1-km spatial resolution). The climate elements considered were monthly precipitation and mean, minimum, and maximum temperature. Input data were gathered from a variety of sources and, where possible, were restricted to records from the 1950–2000 period. We used the thin-plate smoothing spline algorithm implemented in the ANUSPLIN package for interpolation, using latitude, longitude, and elevation as independent variables. We quantified uncertainty arising from the input data and the interpolation by mapping weather station density, elevation bias in the weather stations, and elevation variation within grid cells and through data partitioning and cross validation. Elevation bias tended to be negative (stations lower than expected) at high latitudes but positive in the tropics. Uncertainty is highest in mountainous and in poorly sampled areas. Data partitioning showed high uncertainty of the surfaces on isolated islands, e.g. in the Pacific. Aggregating the elevation and climate data to 10 arc min resolution showed an enormous variation within grid cells, illustrating the value of high-resolution surfaces. A comparison with an existing data set at 10 arc min resolution showed overall agreement, but with significant variation in some regions. A comparison with two high-resolution data sets for the United States also identified areas with large local differences, particularly in mountainous areas. Compared to previous global climatologies, ours has the following advantages: the data are at a higher spatial resolution (400 times greater or more); more weather station records were used; improved elevation data were used; and more information about spatial patterns of uncertainty in the data is available. Owing to the overall low density of available climate stations, our surfaces do not capture of all variation that may occur at a resolution of 1 km, particularly of precipitation in mountainous areas. In future work, such variation might be captured through knowledgebased methods and inclusion of additional co-variates, particularly layers obtained through remote sensing. Copyright 2005 Royal Meteorological Society.
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"Effects of mid-twenty-first century..." refers methods in this paper
...Notwithstanding inherent issues in the gridding of station data (gridded products introduce artificial smoothing; Hijmans et al., 2005), the approaches that we have used have been widely used elsewhere, and alternatives, given the point nature of the observations and spatial character of the…...
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01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: The Global Energy Assessment (GEA) as mentioned in this paper identifies strategies that could help resolve the multiple challenges simultaneously and bring multiple benefits, including sustainable economic and social development, poverty eradication, adequate food production and food security, health for all, climate protection, conservation of ecosystems, and security.
Abstract: Energy is essential for human development and energy systems are a crucial entry point for addressing the most
pressing global challenges of the 21st century, including sustainable economic and social development, poverty
eradication, adequate food production and food security, health for all, climate protection, conservation of ecosystems,
peace and security. Yet, more than a decade into the 21st century, current energy systems do not meet these challenges.
A major transformation is therefore required to address these challenges and to avoid potentially catastrophic future
consequences for human and planetary systems. The Global Energy Assessment (GEA) demonstrates that energy
system change is the key for addressing and resolving these challenges. The GEA identifies strategies that could help
resolve the multiple challenges simultaneously and bring multiple benefits. Their successful implementation requires
determined, sustained and immediate action.
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