Hydrology of the Upper Indus Basin Under Potential Climate Change Scenarios

Soncini, Andrea; Bocchiola, Daniele; Confortola, Gabriele; Nana, Ester; Bianchi, Alberto; Rosso, Renzo; Diolaiuti, Guglielmina; Smiraglia, Claudio; Hardenberg, Jost von; Palazzi, Elisa; Provenzale, Antonello; Vuillermoz, E.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-09300-0_9

Cited by 3 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 123 publications

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“…In general, no single model (or group of models) consistently outperformed all others for all the statistics considered, and the large spread in the behavior of individual models warrants caution in evaluating multimodel ensemble means over high topography [Palazzi et al, 2014]. Despite model uncertainty, a number of studies have utilized ensemble mean precipitation and temperature from GCMs to drive hydrologic models under future climate conditions and project changes in High Mountain Asia's water resources [e.g., Lutz et al, 2013;Shea et al, 2015;Soncini et al, 2015;Su et al, 2016]. Miller et al [2012] provides a synthesis of previous studies projecting hydroclimate changes in High Mountain Asia.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of topographic smoothing on the simulation of winter precipitation in High Mountain Asia

et al. 2017

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Numerous studies have projected future changes in High Mountain Asia water resources based on temperature and precipitation from global circulation models (GCMs) under future climate scenarios. Although the potential benefit of such studies is immense, coarse grid‐scale GCMs are unable to resolve High Mountain Asia's complex topography and thus have a biased representation of regional weather and climate. This study investigates biases in the simulation of physical mechanisms that generate snowfall and contribute to snowpack in High Mountain Asia in coarse topography experiments using the Weather Research and Forecasting model. Regional snowpack is event driven, thus 33 extreme winter orographic precipitation events are simulated at fine atmospheric resolution with 6.67 km resolution topography and smoothed 1.85° × 1.25° GCM topography. As with many modified topography experiments performed in other regions, the distribution of precipitation is highly dependent on first‐order orographic effects, which dominate regional meteorology. However, we demonstrate that topographic smoothing enhances circulation in simulated extratropical cyclones, with significant impacts on orographic precipitation. Despite precipitation reductions of 28% over the highest ranges, due to reduced ascent on windward slopes, total precipitation over the study domain increased by an average of 9% in smoothed topography experiments on account of intensified extratropical cyclone dynamics and cross‐barrier moisture flux. These findings identify an important source of bias in coarse‐resolution simulated precipitation in High Mountain Asia, with important implications for the application of GCMs toward projecting future hydroclimate in the region.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of topographic smoothing on the simulation of winter precipitation in High Mountain Asia

et al. 2017

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“…Many studies on the TP have used conceptual hydrological models combined with degree‐day glacier melt models. For example, a semidistributed degree‐day glacier melt flow routing model based on the unit hydrograph was used to assess future hydrological changes in the Shigar Watershed on the northwestern TP [ Soncini et al ., ]. Another positive degree‐day hydrological model was successfully applied in the Lang tang glacier basin on the south slope of the Himalaya Mountain [ Pradhananga et al ., ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling hydrological process in a glacier basin on the central Tibetan Plateau with a distributed hydrology soil vegetation model

et al. 2016

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A mass and energy balance‐based glacier melt module was coupled with the spatially distributed hydrological soil vegetation model and used to simulate the basin‐scale water and energy balance in the Zhadang glacier basin. Observed hourly meteorological data from 2011 to 2014 were used as model forcing data. The basin‐scale simulations were evaluated at both the point and areal scales using albedo, temperature, and height change on the glacier surface, as well as the mass balance and streamflow of the whole basin. The analysis showed that the model could effectively reproduce the key elements of the energy and mass balance of the Zhadang basin. The analysis demonstrates that radiation was the most important energy component accounting for 80% of total surface energy. On average, glacier runoff contributed to 64% of the total basin discharge during the study period. The overall streamflow was controlled by the glacier mass balance in 2012 and 2014, while temperature and precipitation affected hydrological processes the most during 2011 and 2013. Both high temperature and precipitation resulted in high total basin streamflow but via different mechanisms. High temperatures increase glacier mass loss and glacier melt runoff, whereas high precipitation decreases glacier melt runoff but produces high runoff in nonglacier areas. The early onset of the Indian monsoon with high snowfall reduces glacier surface melt but sustains basin discharge, positively affecting for water resources.

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“…Water 2019, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 12 of 27 be related to the reliability of the data, its accessibility and/or maintenance. Ad hoc sampling campaigns are only reported by studies located in the Upper Ganges [15,81,82,84,133] and Indus rivers [92,95,159]. Altogether, this may explain the larger number of studies applying process-based hydrological models and energy balance melt models in the Indus and Ganges than in the Brahmaputra River.…”

Section: Meteorological Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The objective function for calibration can be compounded with different performance criteria which drive the calibration differently [117,164]. Among the reviewed papers, forty-four use the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient [83,118,126,159], which many combine with the percent or volume bias error [49,143,163]. Twenty-three studies consider three or more performance indicators [29,52,88,93,114,157,160].…”

Section: Calibrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Only three studies in the Ganges [15,81,82] and three in the Indus [84,92,159] collected part of their data from field campaigns to define parameter values (e.g., snow albedo, debris thickness and snow density) or for calibration (e.g., ice melt and velocity). The fact that field campaigns are rare amongst the reviewed literature and that they cover very small, high elevation areas emphasises the difficulties of data acquisition in the area, physically and due to geo-political sensitivities.…”

Section: Calibrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Current Practice and Recommendations for Modelling Global Change Impacts on Water Resource in the Himalayas

Momblanch

Holman

Jain

2019

Water

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Global change is expected to have a strong impact in the Himalayan region. The climatic and orographic conditions result in unique modelling challenges and requirements. This paper critically appraises recent hydrological modelling applications in Himalayan river basins, focusing on their utility to analyse the impacts of future climate and socio-economic changes on water resource availability in the region. Results show that the latter are only represented by land use change. Distributed, process-based hydrological models coupled with temperature-index melt models are predominant. The choice of spatial discretisation is critical for model performance due to the strong influence of elevation on meteorological variables and snow/ice accumulation and melt. However, the sparsity and limited reliability of point weather data, and the biases and low resolution of gridded datasets, hinder the representation of the meteorological complexity. These data limitations often limit the selection of models and the quality of the outputs by forcing the exclusion of processes that are significant to the local hydrology. The absence of observations for water stores and fluxes other than river flows prevents multi-variable calibration and increases the risk of equifinality. The uncertainties arising from these limitations are amplified in climate change analyses and, thus, systematic assessment of uncertainty propagation is required. Based on these insights, transferable recommendations are made on directions for future data collection and model applications that may enhance realism within models and advance the ability of global change impact assessments to inform adaptation planning in this globally important region.

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Hydrology of the Upper Indus Basin Under Potential Climate Change Scenarios

Cited by 3 publications

References 123 publications

Effects of topographic smoothing on the simulation of winter precipitation in High Mountain Asia

Effects of topographic smoothing on the simulation of winter precipitation in High Mountain Asia

Modeling hydrological process in a glacier basin on the central Tibetan Plateau with a distributed hydrology soil vegetation model

Current Practice and Recommendations for Modelling Global Change Impacts on Water Resource in the Himalayas

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