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Author: Jonas Roberts Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
This manuscript thesis presents four stand-alone papers which all contribute to the investigation of projected impacts of climate change on the hydrology of Labrador's Churchill River Basin. The overarching goal of this undertaking was to provide useful information to Nalcor Energy, a hydroelectric developer, regarding the change in the amount and timing of water in the Churchill River between a base period (1971-2000) and a future period (2041-2070). Three separate multi-model approaches used data from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program to look at the impacts of climate change on the Churchill River: (i) Bias-corrected precipitation and temperature data forced a hydrologic model to investigate the changes in mean daily streamflow for the Pinus River, a subbasin of the Churchill River; (ii) A new approach (dubbed "fullstream analysis") took advantage of the full range of simulated hydrological variables from each ensemble member and was used to study the expected changes in mean annual runoff of the entire basin, and; (iii) Weighted multi-model ensembles examined the simulated impacts of climate change on mean monthly runoff for the entire basin. Several results were common across the various approaches. Ensemble mean annual increases in runoff were found to be similar, between 8.9% and 14.6%. Further to this, an increase in cold-season runoff amounts, an earlier onset of the spring melt (though not necessarily a larger spring melt) and no discernable change in the late summer and early fall runoff were found. In an effort to further understand sources of error and uncertainty of the climate models used, water balances were investigated and the annual cycle of residuals quantified. Residual magnitudes varied widely between months and models and were dependent on whether one examined atmospheric or terrestrial balances. Water balance residuals remained relatively consistent between time periods implying they are systemic and not climate dependent.
Author: Jonas Roberts Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
This manuscript thesis presents four stand-alone papers which all contribute to the investigation of projected impacts of climate change on the hydrology of Labrador's Churchill River Basin. The overarching goal of this undertaking was to provide useful information to Nalcor Energy, a hydroelectric developer, regarding the change in the amount and timing of water in the Churchill River between a base period (1971-2000) and a future period (2041-2070). Three separate multi-model approaches used data from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program to look at the impacts of climate change on the Churchill River: (i) Bias-corrected precipitation and temperature data forced a hydrologic model to investigate the changes in mean daily streamflow for the Pinus River, a subbasin of the Churchill River; (ii) A new approach (dubbed "fullstream analysis") took advantage of the full range of simulated hydrological variables from each ensemble member and was used to study the expected changes in mean annual runoff of the entire basin, and; (iii) Weighted multi-model ensembles examined the simulated impacts of climate change on mean monthly runoff for the entire basin. Several results were common across the various approaches. Ensemble mean annual increases in runoff were found to be similar, between 8.9% and 14.6%. Further to this, an increase in cold-season runoff amounts, an earlier onset of the spring melt (though not necessarily a larger spring melt) and no discernable change in the late summer and early fall runoff were found. In an effort to further understand sources of error and uncertainty of the climate models used, water balances were investigated and the annual cycle of residuals quantified. Residual magnitudes varied widely between months and models and were dependent on whether one examined atmospheric or terrestrial balances. Water balance residuals remained relatively consistent between time periods implying they are systemic and not climate dependent.
Author: Oriana Shackell Chegwidden Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 103
Book Description
Whether at the scale of a small watershed or a large multinational basin, it has become common practice for water managers to use ensembles of projections to plan for hydrologic change. Better understanding these ensembles can help improve the design of future hydrologic modeling studies. In this dissertation I will describe three uses of hydroclimate ensembles to support water resource planning efforts. In Chapter 2 I present a large ensemble of hydrologic climate change projections for the Columbia River basin within the hydroclimatically diverse Pacific Northwestern United States and Canada (PNW). I show how methodological decisions in the modeling process variously affect the projections of change depending on hydroclimatic regime and metric of interest. In Chapter 3 I delve deeper into the PNW to examine the impactful metric of changes in floods, determining how dominant flood generating processes will evolve under climate change. I also calculate first-order sensitivities of high flows to changes in climate. In Chapter 4, I apply the lessons learned from the first two studies, conducted within the transboundary Columbia River basin, to transboundary rivers around the world. I present a study identifying hot spots of changes in water availability and hydropolitical risk for over 80 rivers (esp. transboundary rivers) around the world as projected by results from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6. Finally, I present how the findings from this dissertation can contribute to improved hydroclimate impacts assessments.
Author: Eusebio Mercedes Ingol-Blanco Publisher: ISBN: Category : Climatic changes Languages : en Pages : 190
Book Description
Water resources availability could be affected by alterations of hydrologic processes as a result of climate change. Global projections of climate change indicate negative impacts on water systems with increasing flooding and drought events. This investigation presents the modeling of climate change effects on the hydrology and water resources availability in the Rio Conchos basin, the main tributary of the lower portion of the bi-national Rio Grande/Bravo basin, and its impact on the water treaty signed between the United States of America and Mexico in 1944. One of the problems most relevant to the study basin is the frequent occurrence of long drought periods. Coupled with increased water demands and low irrigation efficiencies, the competition for water resources is high on both sides of the border. Three main parts are addressed in this research. First, a hydrologic model has been developed using the one-dimensional, 2 layer soil moisture accounting scheme embedded in a water evaluation and planning model. Second, downscaled precipitation and temperature data, from five general circulation models for two emission scenarios, A1B and A2, were used as inputs to the Rio Conchos hydrologic model to determine the effect on basin hydrology. A multi-model ensemble is developed and several techniques, such as probability density functions, wavelet analysis, and trend analysis, are used to assess the impacts. Third, a water resources planning model for the basin has been developed, which integrates the hydrologic model and water management modeling, to evaluate the impacts on the entire water system and simulate adaptive strategies to mitigate climate change in the study basin. Skill-weighted multi-model ensemble results show that annual average runoff may be reduced by 12% ± 53% and 20% ± 45% in 2080-2099 relative to 1980-1999 for the A1B and A2 scenarios, respectively. Likewise, results show that reliability and resiliency of the water system will tend to decrease; consequently, the vulnerability of the system increases over time. Proposed adaptation measures could make the system more reliable and less vulnerable in meeting water demands for irrigation and municipal uses.
Author: Allison Marshall Inouye Publisher: ISBN: Category : Hydrologic models Languages : en Pages : 73
Book Description
In the Western United States where 50-70% of annual precipitation comes in the form of winter snowfall, water supplies may be particularly sensitive to a warming climate. We worked with a network of stakeholders in the Big Wood Basin, Idaho, to explore how climate change may affect water resources and identify strategies that may help mitigate the impacts. The 8,300 square kilometer region in central Idaho contains a mixture of public and private land ownership, a diversity of landcover ranging from steep forested headwaters to expansive desert shrublands to a concentrated area of urban development that has experienced a quadrupling of population since the 1970s. With nearly 60% of precipitation falling as winter snow, stakeholders expressed concern regarding the vulnerability of the quantity and timing of seasonal snowpack as well as surface water supplies used primarily for agricultural irrigation under projected climate change. Here, we achieve two objectives. The first is the development of a hydrologic model to represent the dynamics of the surface water system in the Big Wood Basin. We use the semi-distributed model Envision-Flow to represent surface water hydrology, reservoir operations, and agricultural irrigation. We calibrated the model using a multi-criteria objective function that considered three metrics related to streamflow and one metric related to snow water equivalent. The model achieved higher an efficiency of 0.74 for the main stem of the Big Wood River and 0.50 for the Camas Creek tributary during the validation period. The second objective is an analysis of the Big Wood Basin hydrology under alternative future climate scenarios. We forced the calibrated model with three downscaled CMIP5 climate model inputs representing a range of possible future conditions over the period 2010-2070. The climate models simulate an increase in basin average annual air temperature ranging from 1.6-5.7oC in the 2060s compared to the 1980-2009 average. The climate models show less of a clear trend regarding precipitation but in general, one model simulates precipitation patterns similar to historic, one is slightly wetter than historic, and one is slightly drier than historic by the mid-21st century. Under these future climate scenarios, the depth of April 1 SWE may decline by as much as 92% in the 2060s compared to the historic average. Mid to high elevations exhibit the largest reductions in SWE. Simulated streamflows show a shift in timing, with peak flows occurring up to three weeks earlier and center of timing from two to seven weeks earlier in the 2050-2069 period compared to the historic period. Reduced peak flows of 14-70% were simulated by mid-century. The simulated total annual streamflow, though, fell within the historic interquartile range for most years in the future period. These and other metrics considered suggest that the surface water hydrology of the Big Wood Basin is likely to be impacted by climate change. If the natural water storage provided by the annual snowpack is reduced and timing of streamflows shifts, water resource use and management may need to change in the future. This work provides a foundation from which to explore alternative management scenarios. The approach used here can be transferred to other watersheds to further assess how water resources may be affected by climate change.
Author: Tsou Chun Jaw Publisher: ISBN: 9781267132352 Category : Languages : en Pages : 168
Book Description
Twentieth century climate change induced by anthropogenic forcings has been recognized as one of the most serious issues affecting the development of mankind. Impacts of climate change on hydrologic processes are highly relevant to human activities and draw a great deal of scientific attention. In particular, semi-arid hydrology and water resources, which are encountering significant challenges in present climate, are projected to be more vulnerable to the future climate. While relevant studies emphasize large-scale impacts on hydrological processes due to climate changes, investigations of the impacts of climate changes on regional, even basin-scale hydrology are relatively limited. The main objective of this dissertation is to assess the potential hydrologic impacts of climate change over a semi-arid region by means of hydrologic modeling driven by high-resolution meteorological forcings. While GCMs are considered as powerful tools to simulate large-scale climate changes in the Earth system, climate information derived from GCMs needs to be further downscaled to meet the requirements of assessing the impact of regional climate and hydrology on global climate change. In this study, dynamical downscaling implementing a Regional Climate Model (RCM) to derive finer-resolution climate data is conducted, and three GCMs (BCCR, CCSM3, and ECHAM5) are adopted as the forcing data sets of the dynamical downscaling to evaluate regional climate and its hydrologic impacts over the semi-arid Morocco under the present-day and future climate scenarios. Downscaled precipitation analyses indicate that, systematically, biases are present. Directly using biased RCM output for hydrologic assessments would lead to unrealistic results. Therefore, effective bias correction approaches for the meteorological forcings required in the hydrologic modeling are adopted. While dynamically-downscaled GCMs show varying biases, downscaled ECHAM5 runs are more realistic in reproducing the historical climate patterns. Furthermore, proposed bias corrections (QM, EDCDF, and MovingCDF) significantly reduce the biases both in the meteorological forcings and their hydrologic responses. Among the correction approaches, MovingCDF accounts for the nonstationarity within the projection period and displays the best performance in forcing correction. Hydrologic simulation runs forced by the corrected forcings are significantly improved in the historical period in comparison with the results directly forced by RCM output. For future hydrologic assessments, hydrologic simulations driven by bias-corrected climate forcings exhibit a more consistent agreement. A drier hydrologic condition in the study region is expected in the near future (2036-2065). However, the degrees of the hydrologic impact, are highly dependent on the behaviors of large-scale GCM forcings.
Author: Andreas Mitsutoshi Culbertson Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 71
Book Description
Climate change poses a serious threat to Lake Erie, as global climate models (GCMs) project increases in the amount and intensity of rainfall in surrounding watersheds which may increase flow and nutrient loading into the lake. Quantifying these potential changes is necessary to develop management recommendations to preserve Lake Erie ecosystem services in the future. This study utilized the process-based SWAT hydrologic model and an ensemble of global climate models to study the potential effects IPCC RCP4.5 (mid-range) and RCP8.5 (high) emissions scenarios on the Maumee River discharge and nutrient loading rates through the 21st century. Generally, the impacts of climate change on flow, sediments and nutrients discharged from the Maumee River become more pronounced moving from the near- (2010-2039) to the mid- (2040-2069) and far-century (2070-2099). Increased winter temperatures are expected to result in fewer snowmelt events and greater infiltration, greatly reducing winter surface runoff, sediment, and phosphorus loading. Spring time (March-June) flow, which is highly correlated with Lake Erie harmful algal blooms (HABs), was projected to increase 4.4% (0.2%) in the near-century and 6.1% (12.1%) by the late-century under RCP4.5 (RCP8.5) due to increases in precipitation and reduction in plant stomatal conductance. These increases in flow are expected to result in increased spring sediment loading by 2.6 (0.4%) in the near-century and 8.0% (36.0%) by the late-century under RCP4.5 (RCP8.5). Fall (September-November) discharge was greatly impacted by increased precipitation and projected early harvests, which resulted in prolonged periods of bare fields and susceptibility to erosion. Fall sediment increased 23.3% (17.1%) and soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) increased 17.9% (12.9%) in the near-century, continuing into the far-future, where sediment increased 40.7% (72.2%) and SRP increased 25.7 (43.1%) under RCP4.5 (RCP8.5). Because of increased plant growth and phosphorus uptake driven by elevated carbon dioxide levels, as well as reduced winter surface runoff, annual SRP decreased by 0.7% (3.7%) in the near-century and 11.2% (7.2%) by the far-century, and annual total phosphorus (TP) decreased by 4.0% (6.5%) in the near-century and 14.1% (6.0%) by the far-century under RCP4.5 (RCP8.5). These findings demonstrate that despite projected increases in flows and sediment yields, increased plant growth stimulated by elevated carbon dioxide levels may potentially cause reductions in Maumee River phosphorus loading during the 21st century.
Author: Hui Wang Publisher: ISBN: Category : Electronic dissertations Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
The connections between environmental change and human activities are complex. Scientists have been working on understanding the interactions between hydrological processes, land use/cover change (LUCC) and climate change in both qualitative and quantitative ways for several decades. Although previous studies show that interactions between these three aspects are typically multidimensional and occur in multiple spatial and temporal scales, a systematic investigation of their historical and future relationships is still lacking at a local scale, especially when considering the non-stationarity of LUCC. This doctoral dissertation applies quantitative research methods, such as hydrological and LUCC modeling methods, to cover two general study directions: (1) how human activities (e.g., LUCC), climate change and hydrological processes interact with each other, and (2) how to analyze these interactions when taking local spatial variance into consideration. To follow these directions, this research includes three main sections: First, by integrating a new elasticity of runoff method and a water balance model, I separate and quantify the impacts of climate change and LUCC on increasing surface runoff change in the lower Connecticut River Basin. Inverse variation trends of LUCC on opposite sides of the river is found in this section, giving us motivation to hypothesize that human activity could influence our landscape to varying degrees in different locations. Second, I identify spatially non-stationary relationships between driving factors and land use/cover categories at a local scale by applying geographically weighted logistic regression model. Sensitivity of simulated LUCC to spatial non-stationarity is then examined. Third, based on the previous conclusions, I simulate the streamflow change in a small basin under future LUCC and various climate change scenarios, and ultimately quantify the relationship of change rate between streamflow and climate variables in the future.
Author: Jonas Roberts
Author: Jonas Roberts
Author: Oriana Shackell Chegwidden
Author: Amy Pryse-Phillips
Author: Steven Bohrn
Author: Eusebio Mercedes Ingol-Blanco
Author: Allison Marshall Inouye
Author: Tsou Chun Jaw
Author: Ruud T. W. L. Hurkmans
Author: Andreas Mitsutoshi Culbertson
Author: Hui Wang