Investigating water budget dynamics in 18 river basins across the Tibetan Plateau through multiple datasets

Liu, Wenbin; Sun, Fubao; Li, Yanzhong; Zhang, Guoqing; Sang, Yan‐Fang; Lim, Wee Ho; Liu, Jiahong; Wang, Hong; Bai, Peng

doi:10.5194/hess-22-351-2018

Cited by 46 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…The MEM annual precipitation slightly increases as well by 0.23 and 0.28 mm/year under the two emission scenarios. The projected warming and wetting climate is consistent with the historical climate change detected using the observed meteorological data in the UYR basin as well as the entire Tibetan Plateau during the past several decades (Cuo et al, ; Liu et al, ; Meng et al, ; Shi et al, ). Moreover, the MEM annual snowfall and snow‐to‐precipitation ratio would decrease significantly by 0.50 mm/year and 0.17% per year under RCP 4.5 as well as by 0.73 mm/year and 0.25% per year under RCP 8.5.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 81%

Snow Hydrology in the Upper Yellow River Basin Under Climate Change: A Land Surface Modeling Perspective

Liu

Sun

et al. 2018

JGR Atmospheres

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Snow has been widely recognized as a crucial component of water resources and is expected to be vulnerable to climate change in cold and mountainous regions. Here we projected climate change impacts on snow hydrology in the upper Yellow River (UYR) basin through a distributed biosphere hydrological model with improved snow physics, forced with Inter‐Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project climate model outputs under two emission scenarios (representative concentration pathways, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) during the period of 1996–2025. The results indicated that the climate in the UYR basin is turning warmer and wetter. In this context, more precipitation would occur as rain (snow‐to‐precipitation ratio would decrease accordingly). The total runoff generation would increase slightly with increased precipitation. The simulated snow depth and snow water equivalent would decrease by 33% and 19% per 1 °C warming under the RCP4.5. These declined rates would further enlarge under the RCP8.5. Accordingly, the multimodel ensemble mean snowmelt‐to‐runoff ratio decreases by 9% and 7% per 1 °C warming under the two emission scenarios. The projected responses of snow hydrology (e.g., snow depth, snow water equivalent, and snowmelt) to the changing climate in the UYR basin are consistent among different climate models and RCP scenarios, which would provide valuable insights for water resources management, environmental protection, and climate change adaption in high mountainous basins and their downstream regions.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 81%

Snow Hydrology in the Upper Yellow River Basin Under Climate Change: A Land Surface Modeling Perspective

Liu

Sun

et al. 2018

JGR Atmospheres

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“…However, here we do not intend to quantify the contribution from each balance term, but try to address the relationship between the net lake water storage change (ΔV) and the AW budgets. Figure 9 shows annual time series of AW budgets (mm) estimated from ERA-I, MERRA2, and JRA55 and lake mass change (Gt) derived from Zhang, Yao, et al (2017) over the ETP (Gao et al, 2014;Liu et al, 2018;Lorenz et al, 2014), the good correspondence between the independent variables of AW budgets and GRACE TWSC and remote sensing-based lake mass change suggests the modulation of the AW budget on the TWS changes in the ETP.…”

Section: Aw Budget and Tws Change Over The Etpmentioning

confidence: 99%

Atmospheric Water Transport to the Endorheic Tibetan Plateau and Its Effect on the Hydrological Status in the Region

Chen

et al. 2019

JGR Atmospheres

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The endorheic Tibetan Plateau (ETP), which consists of all the endorheic basins of the Tibetan Plateau (TP), has exhibited an overall mass gain in recent decades. However, the role played by atmospheric water (AW) transport on the hydrological status over the ETP is poorly understood. In this study, the AW source to the ETP was tracked with the Water Accounting Model‐2 layers (WAM‐2) and AW transport to the ETP through its boundaries was quantified, with three reanalysis products (ERA‐I, MERRA‐2, and JRA‐55) during 1979/1980–2015. It is found that total AW input to the ETP is about 13–25%, 59–71%, 10–13%, and 3–7% of mean annual totals in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, respectively. At annual scales, the AW source from land (52–54%) dominates the AW contribution to the ETP, while local recycling of AW over the ETP accounts for about 17–22% of the mean annual total AW contribution. Increased precipitation over the ETP during 1979–2015 was mostly attributed to the significantly increased AW contribution from the Indian Ocean, especially from increased AW inputs transported from the western and southern boundaries in summer. Comparisons between the AW budget and terrestrial water storage changes indicate that the AW budget change over the ETP modulated the variations of terrestrial water storage change during 2002–2014 and annual lake mass change during 1989–2015.

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“…Among the three ET data sets, the GLEAM and GLDAS/ NOAH data include potential ET estimates for the study period, which have been evaluated to be among the most reliable estimates of global evapotranspiration (Lorenz et al, 2014;McCabe et al, 2016;Wei et al, 2017). However, restricted by the relatively sparse stations and complex terrain conditions of the TP, different data sets generally have inconsistent performance among different basins or/and land cover types (Yang et al, 2017c;Liu, 2018;Liu et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2018a). Since there are a limited number of meteorological stations distributed within or around the studied lake basins (see Figure 3), it is more practical to estimate the entire ITP lake evaporations based on the spatial interpolation (e.g., by the Spline method) of pan evaporation measurements (ETpan).…”

Section: Et Data and Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of amplified evaporation due to lake expansion on the water budget across the inner Tibetan Plateau

Song

Sheng

Zhan

et al. 2019

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Over the past decades, changing climate has exerted pronounced influences on the cryo‐hydrological environment on the Tibetan Plateau. One major manifestation is the widespread lake expansions over Tibetan endorheic basins. The enlarged lake water surface areas are expected to significantly alter land‐atmosphere water fluxes, which in return may pose feedbacks to the climate system and hydrological processes. The goal of this study is to investigate the potential influences of the recent lake expansions on amplifying the evaporation flux over the basins of inner Tibetan Plateau (ITP). We detected that the ITP lakes have experienced a net inundation increase of 4,542.3 km2 during 2000–2015, about 95.6% of which was contributed by lakes larger than 1 km2. We further estimated the land and water evaporations based on multi‐source, available actual evapotranspiration (ETa) and potential evapotranspiration data sets, and in situ evaporation records. The differences between land ETa and lake water evaporation were employed to represent the evaporation alternation over newly inundated basin (named “land‐to‐lake” hereafter) areas. The land ETa was estimated based on the average of three commonly used gridded data sets while the over‐lake evaporation was calculated by the empirical correction of potential evaporation estimates by spatial interpolation of pan evaporation. A conservative estimate using the pan coefficient of 0.6 indicates that the newly inundated lake area may have led to a potential evaporation increase of 3.08 ± 1.08 Gt/year on the ITP. The increased evaporation flux is close to half of the recent annual growth rate of lake water storage in the ITP. Despite unneglectable uncertainties, our estimates initiate an important assessment of how the recent lake expansion across the ITP has influenced the local land‐atmosphere interactions and the water cycle. Accounting this evaporation amplification is crucial to reduce the uncertainty in estimating basin‐scale water budgets and projecting the regional water balance.

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Investigating water budget dynamics in 18 river basins across the Tibetan Plateau through multiple datasets

Cited by 46 publications

References 63 publications

Snow Hydrology in the Upper Yellow River Basin Under Climate Change: A Land Surface Modeling Perspective

Snow Hydrology in the Upper Yellow River Basin Under Climate Change: A Land Surface Modeling Perspective

Atmospheric Water Transport to the Endorheic Tibetan Plateau and Its Effect on the Hydrological Status in the Region

Impact of amplified evaporation due to lake expansion on the water budget across the inner Tibetan Plateau

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