Future changes in snowmelt‐driven runoff timing over the western US

Rauscher, Sara A.; Pal, Jeremy S.; Diffenbaugh, Noah S.; Benedetti, Michael M.

doi:10.1029/2008gl034424

Cited by 152 publications

(153 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Responses of water resources supply to climate change is the most important issue in recent studies. These studies confirm that the discharge regime in snowmelt-dominated river basins is most sensitive to temperature increases in snow season (Rauscher et al, 2008;Adam et al, 2009;Day, 2009;Stewart et al, 2004). The earlier occurring of spring snowmelt runoff had been observed in many watersheds around the world (Bates, 2008;Lemke et al, 2007).With more than one-sixth of the Earth's population relying on glaciers and seasonal snowpacks for their water supply, it is still needed to diagnose and predict the consequences of these hydrological changes for future water availability (Barnett et al, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Responses of snowmelt runoff to climatic change in an inland river basin, Northwestern China, over the past 50 years

Wang

Hao

2010

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The spatial and temporal variations of snowcover distribution, and snowmelt runoff are considered as sensitive indicators for climatic change. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and forecast the responses of snowmelt runoff to climate change in an inland river basin. The upper basin of Heihe River in Northwestern China was chose as the study area, and the observation data from the meteorological and hydrological stations were utilized to analyze the status and regularity of the climatic change over the past 50 years. Snow cover area was obtained by an optimized technology using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer data with Normalized Difference Snow Index adjustment and topographic correction. A concept of potential snowmelt was suggested to illustrate the response of spatial snowmelt to climate change. The results show that the annual SCA proportion and the potential snowmelt keep an increasing trend since 2000. There is a negative relationship between annual air temperature and SCA proportion from 2000 to 2008. Snowmelt Runoff Model was chose to simulate snowmelt runoff and scenario forecast the change trend of snowmelt runoff in this region. The results show that climatic warming was apparent in the upper basin of Heihe River over the past 50 a. Annual average air temperature of three different weather stations located in the basin has increased 2.1 • C, 2.6 • C and 2.9 • C respectively from 1956 to present. The snowmelt runoff has increased obviously from 1970 to present. With different warming climate scenarios, the results by using SRM simulating showed that the first occurred time of snowmelt runoff shift ahead and discharge become larger as responses of snowmelt runoff to air temperature increasing, and the influence of temperature rising on average discharge of the whole snow season is not obvious.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Responses of snowmelt runoff to climatic change in an inland river basin, Northwestern China, over the past 50 years

Wang

Hao

2010

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Section: Climate Variability and Change In The Upper Rio Grandesupporting

confidence: 61%

“…In some recent analysis of the region's climatology, Gutzler & Robbins (2011) indicate that the droughts of the mid 20th century are likely to return with greater frequency through the coming century as a result of climate change. This warming and drying of southwest USA is also supported by Karl et al (2009) and Rauscher et al (2008), the latter suggesting a significant decrease in the number of days below freezing in the upper watershed of the Rio Grande where snow is stored and released.In assessing climate change impacts, it is important to select scenarios based on climate models that reflect a representative range of plausible regional outcomes. By making choices across the available range, uncertainty about the regional climate change is conveyed more accurately than would be if selections were more narrowly targeted.…”

supporting

confidence: 61%

Hydro-economic consequences of climate change in the upper Rio Grande

Hurd¹,

Coonrod²

2012

Clim. Res.

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Social, economic, and environmental systems in arid regions are vulnerable to disruptions in water supplies that are likely to accompany future climate changes. With a particular focus on the Rio Grande in New Mexico, this paper uses a hydro-economic model to integrate plausible changes in population and climate over the coming 70 yr. Specifically, projections of regional population growth are combined with alternative climate scenarios in order to simulate changes in streamflows, water supplies, and water demands within a framework that economizes water use. The study uses 3 climate change scenarios across 2 distinct future time periods to model runoff, water supply, and water demand changes, and estimate the economic and water-use consequences. Specifically, temperature and precipitation scenarios were generated using results from 3 general circulation models (GCMs), namely, HadCM3 (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research Met Office), CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization of Australia), and the GFDL0 (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), all of which were driven by the A1B emissions scenario from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. The WATBAL hydrologic model and the Rio Grande hydro-economic model were used to model the hydrologic and economic consequences, respectively. Findings indicate that agricultural water users could be most affected by curtailed deliveries and higher water scarcity. Municipal water users are likely to face higher delivery costs as competition for scarce surface water supplies rises; however, groundwater supplies provide an effective buffer for many of the municipal systems and help ameliorate price spikes. KEY WORDS: Climate change · Hydro-economic model · Water resources · Rio Grande Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherClim Res 53: [103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118] 2012 do not necessarily lessen the potential consequences that accompany possible climate changes, which could exacerbate the severity, frequency, and duration of periodic droughts.The principal aims of this paper are 3-fold.(1) To see how well climate change projections from existing general circulation models (GCMs) can be used to simulate changes in runoff and streamflow patterns. (2) To combine these scenarios of climatic and hydrologic changes with projections of regional population growth into a model that can estimate changes in both water demands and supplies across time and location. (3) To estimate and examine some of the potential economic consequences of plausible climatic changes for the Rio Grande watershed and its water users. CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND CHANGE IN THE UPPER RIO GRANDETree-ring analysis indicates that the upper Rio Grande has a long and highly variable history of precipitation and streamflow, punctuated with periods of high runoff and drought (Margol...

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“…A large number of studies demonstrate that RCMs can realistically simulate weather and its statistics in comparison to observations (e.g., Früh et al 2010;Kunz et al 2010;Semmler and Jacob 2004). Other studies use dynamical downscaling of global climate model datasets with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations (e.g., Frei et al 1998;Leung and Qian 2009;Rauscher et al 2008). All of these studies implicitly assume a superiority of the RCM output over the driving global data, but usually do not explicitly prove this.…”

Section: G H -R E S O L U T I O N Climate Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Climate Models Add Value to Global Model Data: A Review and Selected Examples

Feser

Rockel

Storch³

et al. 2011

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

434

326

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An important challenge in current climate modeling is to realistically describe small-scale weather statistics, such as topographic precipitation and coastal wind patterns, or regional phenomena like polar lows. Global climate models simulate atmospheric processes with increasingly higher resolutions, but still regional climate models have a lot of advantages. They consume less computation time because of their limited simulation area and thereby allow for higher resolution both in time and space as well as for longer integration times. Regional climate models can be used for dynamical down-scaling purposes because their output data can be processed to produce higher resolved atmospheric fields, allowing the representation of small-scale processes and a more detailed description of physiographic details (such as mountain ranges, coastal zones, and details of soil properties). However, does higher resolution add value when compared to global model results? Most studies implicitly assume that dynamical downscaling leads to output fields that are superior to the driving global data, but little work has been carried out to substantiate these expectations. Here a series of articles is reviewed that evaluate the benefit of dynamical downscaling by explicitly comparing results of global and regional climate model data to the observations. These studies show that the regional climate model generally performs better for the medium spatial scales, but not always for the larger spatial scales. Regional models can add value, but only for certain variables and locations—particularly those influenced by regional specifics, such as coasts, or mesoscale dynamics, such as polar lows. Therefore, the decision of whether a regional climate model simulation is required depends crucially on the scientific question being addressed.

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Future changes in snowmelt‐driven runoff timing over the western US

Cited by 152 publications

References 36 publications

Responses of snowmelt runoff to climatic change in an inland river basin, Northwestern China, over the past 50 years

Responses of snowmelt runoff to climatic change in an inland river basin, Northwestern China, over the past 50 years

Hydro-economic consequences of climate change in the upper Rio Grande

Regional Climate Models Add Value to Global Model Data: A Review and Selected Examples

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