Five centuries of Upper Indus River flow from tree rings

Cook, Edward R.; Palmer, Jonathan; Ahmed, Moinuddin; Woodhouse, Connie A.; Fenwick, Pavla; Zafar, Muhammad Usama; Wahab, Muhammad; Khan, Nasrullah

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2013.02.004

Cited by 131 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 53 publications

(91 reference statements)

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“…In addition, in the Upper Indus basin (Fig. A.2h) the monthly SH GWS changes agree well to estimates of yearly accumulated river discharge anomalies from 2003 to 2008 at the Partab Bridge gauge (Cook et al, 2013).…”

Section: Sh Changes Of the Tws Componentssupporting

confidence: 73%

Groundwater storage changes in the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent areas revealed from GRACE satellite gravity data

Xiang

Wang

Steffen

et al. 2016

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

146

120

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Understanding groundwater storage (GWS) changes is vital to the utilization and control of water resources in the Tibetan Plateau. However, well level observations are rare in this big area, and reliable hydrology models including GWS are not available. We use hydro-geodesy to quantitate GWS changes in the Tibetan Plateau and surroundings from 2003 to 2009 using a combined analysis of satellite gravity and satellite altimetry data, hydrology models as well as a model of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). Release-5 GRACE gravity data are jointly used in a mascon fitting method to estimate the terrestrial water storage (TWS) changes during the period, from which the hydrology contributions and the GIA effects are effectively deducted to give the estimates of GWS changes for 12 selected regions of interest. The hydrology contributions are carefully calculated from glaciers and lakes by ICESat-1 satellite altimetry data, permafrost degradation by an Active-Layer Depth (ALD) model, soil moisture and snow water equivalent by multiple hydrology models, and the GIA effects are calculated with the new ICE-6G_C (VM5a) model. Taking into account the measurement errors and the variability of the models, the uncertainties are rigorously estimated for the TWS changes, the hydrology contributions (including GWS changes) and the GIA effect. For the first time, we show explicitly separated GWS changes in the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent areas except for those to the south of the Himalayas. We find increasing trend rates for eight basins: +2.46 ± 2.24 Gt/yr for the Jinsha River basin, +1.77 ± 2.09 Gt/yr for the Nujiang-Lancangjiang Rivers Source Region, +1.86 ± 1.69 Gt/yr for the Yangtze River Source Region, +1.14 ± 1.39 Gt/yr for the Yellow River Source Region, +1.52 ± 0.95 Gt/yr for the Qaidam basin, +1.66 ± 1.52 Gt/yr for the central Qiangtang Nature Reserve, +5.37 ± 2.17 Gt/yr for the Upper Indus basin and +2.77 ± 0.99 Gt/yr for the Aksu River basin. All these increasing trends are most likely caused by increased runoff recharges from melt water and/or precipitation in the surroundings. We also find that the administrative actions such as the Chinese Ecological Protection and Construction Project help to store more groundwater in the Three Rivers Source Region, and suggest that seepages from the Endorheic basin to the west of it are a possible source for GWS increase in this region. In addition, our estimates for GWS changes basically confirm previous results along Afghanistan, Pakistan, north India and Bangladesh, and clearly reflect the excessive use of groundwater. Our results will benefit the water resource management in the study area, and are of particular significance for the ecological restoration in the Tibetan Plateau.

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Section: Sh Changes Of the Tws Componentssupporting

confidence: 73%

Groundwater storage changes in the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent areas revealed from GRACE satellite gravity data

Xiang

Wang

Steffen

et al. 2016

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

146

120

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Treering proxies may also record winter snow accumulation, either via the subsequent influence of spring melt on growing season water balance or more directly via limitations on the initiation of growth Coulthard and Smith, 2016). Tree rings have also been used with considerable success to reconstruct river flow (e.g., Stockton and Jacoby, 1976;Meko et al, 2007;Maxwell et al, 2011;Cook et al, 2013b;Harley et al, 2017) and runoff ratio (Lehner et al, 2017), as tree growth can reflect an integrated seasonal moisture balance signal in a fashion similar to watersheds. Sub-annual chronologies isolating earlywood and latewood width can provide differential seasonal resolution.…”

Section: Tree Ringsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, reconstructions from multiple river systems reveal the frequency of multi-basin droughts that could affect the large-scale water supply infrastructure across the Western United States (Meko and Woodhouse, 2005;MacDonald et al, 2008). River flow reconstructions from tree rings are not limited to the Western United States and can be developed in other basins where tree-ring proxies reflect large-scale, seasonally integrated moisture balance (e.g., Lara et al, 2008;Wils et al, 2010;Urrutia et al, 2011;Cook et al, 2013b;Allen et al, 2015). The widespread development of river flow reconstructions offers the ability to constrain model projections of the future using these paleoclimatic estimates.…”

Section: River Flow Reconstructions Applied To Water Resources Managementioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing proxy and model estimates of hydroclimate variability and change over the Common Era

Smerdon¹,

Luterbacher²,

Phipps³

et al. 2017

Clim. Past

101

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Abstract. Water availability is fundamental to societies and ecosystems, but our understanding of variations in hydroclimate (including extreme events, flooding, and decadal periods of drought) is limited because of a paucity of modern instrumental observations that are distributed unevenly across the globe and only span parts of the 20th and 21st centuries. Such data coverage is insufficient for characterizing hydroclimate and its associated dynamics because of its multidecadal to centennial variability and highly regionalized spatial signature. High-resolution (seasonal to decadal) hydroclimatic proxies that span all or parts of the Common Era (CE) and paleoclimate simulations from climate models are therefore important tools for augmenting our understanding of hydroclimate variability. In particular, the comparison of the two sources of information is critical for addressing the uncertainties and limitations of both while enriching each of their interpretations. We review the principal proxy data available for hydroclimatic reconstructions over the CE and highlight the contemporary understanding of how these proxies are interpreted as hydroclimate indicators. We also review the available last-millennium simulations from fully coupled climate models and discuss several outstanding challenges associated with simulating hydroclimate variability and change over the CE. A specific review of simulated hydroclimatic changes forced by volcanic events is provided, as is a discussion of expected improvements in estimated radiative forcings, models, and their implementation in the future. Our review of hydroclimatic proxies and last-millennium model simulations is used as the basis for articulating a variety of considerations and best practices for how to perform proxy-model comparisons of CE hydroclimate. This discussion provides a framework for how best to evaluate hydroclimate variability and its associated dynamics using these comparisons and how they can better inform interpretations of both proxy data and model simulations. We subsequently explore means of using proxy-model comparisons to better constrain and characterize future hydroclimate risks. This is explored specifically in the context of several examples that demonstrate how proxy-model comparisons can be used to quantitatively constrain future hydroclimatic risks as estimated from climate model projections.

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“…Hydroclimate reconstructions for the Common Era have been performed for localized regions, such as for snowpack and precipitation in specific mountain ranges (e.g., Belmecheri et al, 2016;Neukom et al, 2015) or for the streamflow of particular rivers (e.g., Jacoby Jr., 1976;Cook et al, 2013). On continental scales, gridded "drought atlases" targeting the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) have been derived over portions of North America (Cook et al, 2007;Stahle et al, 2016), Europe (E. R. Cook et al, 2015), Southeastern Asia (Cook et al, 2010a), and Australia and New Zealand (Palmer et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A pseudoproxy assessment of data assimilation for reconstructing the atmosphere–ocean dynamics of hydroclimate extremes

Steiger

Smerdon

2017

Clim. Past

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Abstract. Because of the relatively brief observational record, the climate dynamics that drive multiyear to centennial hydroclimate variability are not adequately characterized and understood. Paleoclimate reconstructions based on data assimilation (DA) optimally fuse paleoclimate proxies with the dynamical constraints of climate models, thus providing a coherent dynamical picture of the past. DA is therefore an important new tool for elucidating the mechanisms of hydroclimate variability over the last several millennia. But DA has so far remained untested for global hydroclimate reconstructions. Here we explore whether or not DA can be used to skillfully reconstruct global hydroclimate variability along with the driving climate dynamics. Through a set of idealized pseudoproxy experiments, we find that an established DA reconstruction approach can in principle be used to reconstruct hydroclimate at both annual and seasonal timescales. We find that the skill of such reconstructions is generally highest near the proxy sites. This set of reconstruction experiments is specifically designed to estimate a realistic upper bound for the skill of this DA approach. Importantly, this experimental framework allows us to see where and for what variables the reconstruction approach may never achieve high skill. In particular for tree rings, we find that hydroclimate reconstructions depend critically on moisture-sensitive trees, while temperature reconstructions depend critically on temperature-sensitive trees. Realworld DA-based reconstructions will therefore likely require a spatial mixture of temperature-and moisture-sensitive trees to reconstruct both temperature and hydroclimate variables. Additionally, we illustrate how DA can be used to elucidate the dynamical mechanisms of drought with two examples: tropical drivers of multiyear droughts in the North American Southwest and in equatorial East Africa. This work thus provides a foundation for future DA-based hydroclimate reconstructions using real-proxy networks while also highlighting the utility of this important tool for hydroclimate research.

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Five centuries of Upper Indus River flow from tree rings

Cited by 131 publications

References 53 publications

Groundwater storage changes in the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent areas revealed from GRACE satellite gravity data

Groundwater storage changes in the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent areas revealed from GRACE satellite gravity data

Comparing proxy and model estimates of hydroclimate variability and change over the Common Era

A pseudoproxy assessment of data assimilation for reconstructing the atmosphere–ocean dynamics of hydroclimate extremes

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