Assessing climate change impacts on water availability of snowmelt-dominated basins of the Upper Rio Grande basin

Abstract

Please cite this article in press as: Elias, E.H., et al., Assessing climate change impacts on water availability of snowmelt-dominated basins of the Upper Rio Grande basin. J. Hydrol.: Reg. Stud. (2015), http://dx.a b s t r a c t Study region: Upper Rio Grande, Colorado and New Mexico, USA.Study focus: Climate change is predicted to further limit the water availability of the arid southwestern U.S. We use the snowmelt runoff model to evaluate impacts of climate change on snow covered area (SCA), streamflow timing and runoff volume. Simulations investigate four future conditions using models downscaled to existing climate stations. Twenty-four subbasins of the Upper Rio Grande containing appreciable snowmelt and a long-term gauging station are simulated. New hydrological insights for the region: Future annual volume is 193-204 million m 3 more to 448-476 million m 3 less than the preclimate change value of 2688 million m 3 . There is disparity between increased volume in wetter simulations (+7%) and decreased volume (−18%) in drier simulations. SCA on 1 April reduced by approximately 50% in all but the warmer/wetter climate. Peak flow is 14-24 days early in the future climates. Among the 24 subbasins there is considerable range in mean melt season SCA (−40% to −100%), total volume change (−30% to +57%) and runoff timing advancement indicating that climate change is best evaluated at the subbasin scale. Daily hydrographs show higher streamflow in March and April, but less from mid-May until the end of the water year. The large decrease in volume in May, June and July will compound water management challenges in the region. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

The Influential Role of Sociocultural Feedbacks on Community‐Managed Irrigation System Behaviors During Times of Water Stress

“…The general streamflow patterns observed under the RCPs (e.g., lower flows overall and relative increase in flow during the spring months) are consistent with patterns observed by Elias et al () for the Upper Rio Grande Basin and USGS (2015a) for the Upper Rio Grande subbasin for both the Hadgem2‐ES and mean GCMs. Therefore, we have high confidence that the streamflow patterns generated by the upland model capture the general dynamics expected under climate change.…”

“…The general streamflow patterns observed under the RCPs (e.g., lower flows overall and relative increase in flow during the spring months) are consistent with patterns observed by Elias et al (2015) for the Upper Rio Water Resources Research…”

The twenty‐first century Colorado River hot drought and implications for the future

“…The Colorado River declines do not stand alone as the only warming‐related threat to Southwestern water supplies. The Rio Grande also has a grim prognosis [ Reclamation , ; Elias et al ., ]. The drought in California has garnered national attention, and multiple studies have strongly implicated increasing temperatures as a contributor to these woes [ Griffin and Anchukaitis , ; Belmecheri et al ., ; Diffenbaugh et al ., ; Mann and Gleick , ; Seager et al ., ].…”

Forecasted homogenization of high Arctic vegetation communities under climate change

“…However, observations in the area over the past 20 years suggest that this species is now seen more frequently, although this has not been directly quantified. Other uncertainties include changes in the seasonal timing of energy and water availability (Stephenson, 1990), which in other areas, are highly affected by climate change (Elias, Rango, Steele, Mejia, & Smith, 2015). Even at the local scale, future predictions of vegetation distribution are also going to be affected by demographic processes, such as seed set, seed dispersal and persistence of species at their trailing edge (Dullinger et al, 2012).…”