Climatic and anthropogenic factors affecting river discharge to the global ocean, 1951–2000

Milliman, John D.; Farnsworth, Katherine L.; Jones, Phil; Xu, Kehui; Smith, L. C.

doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.03.001

Cited by 416 publications

(341 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Increasing precipitation has been suggested as the main driver of increasing river runoff (Dyurgerov and Carter 2004;McClelland et al 2004). However, contradictory trends in discharge and precipitation have also been reported (Berezovskaya et al 2004;Milliman et al 2008). For some of the basins in our study, gauge undercatch in combination with recently reported increases in snowfall over Siberia (Bulygina et al 2009, Rawlins et al 2009b can to some degree explain the greater increases in observed runoff than in observed precipitation.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 51%

“…Decreased evapotranspiration, due to earlier snowmelt and associated runoff, and/or due to changes in water storage within the drainage basins have also been proposed as potential sources of excess water (Milliman et al 2008). Serreze et al (2002) however found only low correlation between P-E and runoff across the pan-Arctic drainage basin, except for the Lena basin.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Snowfall observation bias, which implies that increases in snowfall are not fully accounted for in precipitation measurements, may explain the apparent excess water for some basins (Bulygina et al 2009;Rawlins et al 2009b). Reduced evaporation due to earlier snowmelt and earlier associated runoff (Milliman et al 2008) is another possible contributing factor. However, the temperature increase found consistently in both direct measurements and GCM projections indicates also a trend component of increasing evapotranspiration and associated decreasing runoff, which should to some degree counteract the effects of unobserved snowfall increase and evaporation reduction due to earlier snowmelt.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Relevance of Hydro-Climatic Change Projection and Monitoring for Assessment of Water Cycle Changes in the Arctic

Bring

Destouni

2010

AMBIO

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Rapid changes to the Arctic hydrological cycle challenge both our process understanding and our ability to find appropriate adaptation strategies. We have investigated the relevance and accuracy development of climate change projections for assessment of water cycle changes in major Arctic drainage basins. Results show relatively good agreement of climate model projections with observed temperature changes, but high model inaccuracy relative to available observation data for precipitation changes. Direct observations further show systematically larger (smaller) runoff than precipitation increases (decreases). This result is partly attributable to uncertainties and systematic bias in precipitation observations, but still indicates that some of the observed increase in Arctic river runoff is due to water storage changes, for example melting permafrost and/or groundwater storage changes, within the drainage basins. Such causes of runoff change affect sea level, in addition to ocean salinity, and inland water resources, ecosystems, and infrastructure. Process-based hydrological modeling and observations, which can resolve changes in evapotranspiration, and groundwater and permafrost storage at and below river basin scales, are needed in order to accurately interpret and translate climate-driven precipitation changes to changes in freshwater cycling and runoff. In contrast to this need, our results show that the density of Arctic runoff monitoring has become increasingly biased and less relevant by decreasing most and being lowest in river basins with the largest expected climatic changes.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 51%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Relevance of Hydro-Climatic Change Projection and Monitoring for Assessment of Water Cycle Changes in the Arctic

Bring

Destouni

2010

AMBIO

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“…it is possible to identify both a subset of nearpristine benchmark catchments and heavily-regulated catchments. An approximate indication of such regions over the world can be made based on the global distribution of deficit watersheds of Milliman et al (2008) or on the global distribution of aging of continental runoff in response to large reservoir impoundment (Vörösmarty and Sahagian, 2000). For river basins that are entirely near-pristine this approach would not bring much benefit, as the gauged hydrology is already natural.…”

Section: Discussion and Outlookmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The degree of flow alteration in the VOB is moderate compared to western Europe or other worlds regions (cf. Milliman et al, 2008) and it is possible to identify both a subset of near-pristine benchmark catchments and heavilyregulated catchments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural streamflow simulation for two largest river basins in Poland: a baseline for identification of flow alterations

Piniewski

2016

Proc. IAHS

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Abstract. The objective of this study was to apply a previously developed large-scale and high-resolution SWAT model of the Vistula and the Odra basins, calibrated with the focus of natural flow simulation, in order to assess the impact of three different dam reservoirs on streamflow using the Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA). A tailored spatial calibration approach was designed, in which calibration was focused on a large set of relatively small non-nested sub-catchments with semi-natural flow regime. These were classified into calibration clusters based on the flow statistics similarity. After performing calibration and validation that gave overall positive results, the calibrated parameter values were transferred to the remaining part of the basins using an approach based on hydrological similarity of donor and target catchments. The calibrated model was applied in three case studies with the purpose of assessing the effect of dam reservoirs (Włocławek, Siemianówka and Czorsztyn Reservoirs) on streamflow alteration. Both the assessment based on gauged streamflow (Before-After design) and the one based on simulated natural streamflow showed large alterations in selected flow statistics related to magnitude, duration, high and low flow pulses and rate of change. Some benefits of using a large-scale and highresolution hydrological model for the assessment of streamflow alteration include: (1) providing an alternative or complementary approach to the classical Before-After designs, (2) isolating the climate variability effect from the dam (or any other source of alteration) effect, (3) providing a practical tool that can be applied at a range of spatial scales over large area such as a country, in a uniform way. Thus, presented approach can be applied for designing more natural flow regimes, which is crucial for river and floodplain ecosystem restoration in the context of the European Union's policy on environmental flows.

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Deep‐sea coral record of human impact on watershed quality in the Mississippi River Basin

Prouty

Roark

Koenig

et al. 2014

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

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Climatic and anthropogenic factors affecting river discharge to the global ocean, 1951–2000

Cited by 416 publications

References 39 publications

Relevance of Hydro-Climatic Change Projection and Monitoring for Assessment of Water Cycle Changes in the Arctic

Relevance of Hydro-Climatic Change Projection and Monitoring for Assessment of Water Cycle Changes in the Arctic

Natural streamflow simulation for two largest river basins in Poland: a baseline for identification of flow alterations

Deep‐sea coral record of human impact on watershed quality in the Mississippi River Basin

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