Predictability of Seasonal Streamflow in a Changing Climate in the Sierra Nevada

He, Minxue; Russo, Mitchel; Anderson, Michael L.

doi:10.3390/cli4040057

Cited by 12 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 79 publications

(65 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For instance, there are two water supply forecasting systems typically applied in operation in parallel across California. The first one uses statistical regression equations that relate to future seasonal runoff to a snow index, antecedent streamflow, and precipitation, as well as forecasted precipitation [26]. The other one relies on a coupled snow and runoff model (NWSRFS) [66][67][68][69] and forecasted precipitation and temperature to generate seasonal runoff forecasts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential Changes in Runoff of California’s Major Water Supply Watersheds in the 21st Century

He¹,

Anderson²,

Schwarz³

et al. 2019

Water

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study assesses potential changes in runoff of California’s eight major Central Valley water supply watersheds in the 21st century. The study employs the latest operative climate projections from 10 general circulation models (GCMs) of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) under two emission scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) to drive a hydrologic model (VIC) in generating runoff projections through 2099. Changes in peak runoff, peak timing, seasonal (major water supply season April–July) runoff, and annual runoff during two future periods, mid-century and late-century, relative to a historical baseline period are examined. Trends in seasonal and annual runoff projections are also investigated. The results indicate that watershed characteristics impact runoff responses to climate change. Specifically, for rain-dominated watersheds, runoff is generally projected to peak earlier with higher peak volumes on average. For snow-dominated watersheds, however, runoff is largely projected to peak within the same month as historical runoff has, with little changes in peak volume during mid-century but pronounced decreases during late-century under the higher emission scenario. The study also identifies changes that are common to all study watersheds. Specifically, the temporal distribution of annual runoff is projected to change in terms of shifting more volume to the wet season, though there is no significant changing trend in the total annual runoff. Additionally, the snowmelt portion of the total annual runoff (represented by April–July runoff divided by total annual runoff) is projected to decline consistently under both emission scenarios, indicative of a shrinking snowpack across the study watersheds. Collectively, these changes imply higher flood risk and lower water supply reliability in the future that are expected to pose stress to California’s water system. Those findings can inform water management adaptation practices (e.g., watershed restoration, re-operation of the current water system, investing in additional water storage) to cope with the stress.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential Changes in Runoff of California’s Major Water Supply Watersheds in the 21st Century

He¹,

Anderson²,

Schwarz³

et al. 2019

Water

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Therefore, the parametric methods are considered less robust than the non-parametric methods [66]. Among all non-parametric methods, the Mann-Kendall test (MKT) [67,68] has been applied extensively in the field of climatology and hydrology [14][15][16]45,69,70]. The approach first identifies the sign of each possible pair of data in the study time series, followed by the determination of the corresponding test statistic z.…”

Section: Trend Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Projected Changes in Precipitation, Temperature, and Drought across California’s Hydrologic Regions in the 21st Century

He¹,

Schwarz²,

Lynn³

et al. 2018

Climate

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study investigated potential changes in future precipitation, temperature, and drought across 10 hydrologic regions in California. The latest climate model projections on these variables through 2099 representing the current state of the climate science were applied for this purpose. Changes were explored in terms of differences from a historical baseline as well as the changing trend. The results indicate that warming is expected across all regions in all temperature projections, particularly in late-century. There is no such consensus on precipitation, with projections mostly ranging from −25% to +50% different from the historical baseline. There is no statistically significant increasing or decreasing trend in historical precipitation and in the majority of the projections on precipitation. However, on average, precipitation is expected to increase slightly for most regions. The increases in late-century are expected to be more pronounced than the increases in mid-century. The study also shows that warming in summer and fall is more significant than warming in winter and spring. The study further illustrates that, compared to wet regions, dry regions are projected to become more arid. The inland eastern regions are expecting higher increases in temperature than other regions. Particularly, the coolest region, North Lahontan, tends to have the highest increases in both minimum and maximum temperature and a significant amount of increase in wet season precipitation, indicative of increasing flood risks in this region. Overall, these findings are meaningful from both scientific and practical perspectives. From a scientific perspective, these findings provide useful information that can be utilized to improve the current flood and water supply forecasting models or develop new predictive models. From a practical perspective, these findings can help decision-makers in making different adaptive strategies for different regions to address adverse impacts posed by those potential changes.

show abstract

“…Previous studies indicated that snowpack-driven change in streamflow predictability varies in different regions/periods, for instance, increase in the decadal-scale historical summer streamflow predictability in the Sierra Nevada watersheds (He et al 2016), decline in the future drought predictability over most of the western United States (Livneh and Badger 2020), and unchanged future summer runoff predictability over the Columbia River headwaters (Tsuruta and Schnorbus 2021). Such spatially heterogeneous streamflow predictability response may be influenced by a number of factors, including the magnitude of snowpack change (e.g., Shrestha et al 2021), the magnitude and timing of streamflow change (e.g., Tan and Gan 2015;Dudley et al 2017), precipitation bias (e.g., Pechlivanidis et al 2020), and their interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Statistical emulation has been widely used for hydroclimatic assessments, such as to provide computationally efficient future hydrologic projections (Vano and Lettenmaier 2013;Schnorbus and Cannon 2014), and to analyze controls and sensitivities of climatic variables on hydrologic responses (Shrestha et al 2019;Chegwidden et al 2020). Additionally, statistical regression approaches have been used to detect changes in streamflow predictability in the historical climate (He et al 2016) and to evaluate future warm-season streamflow predictability under declining snowpack (Livneh and Badger 2020). A potential improvement in this respect is the application of machine learning (ML) methods, which are increasingly being used to extract pattern and insights from geospatial data and provide powerful and flexible tools for analyzing complex and multifaceted problems in climate change science by utilizing exiting data and model simulations (Reichstein et al 2019;Huntingford et al 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Snowpack driven streamflow predictability under future climate: contrasting changes across two western Canadian river basins

Shrestha

Dibike

Bonsal

2022

Journal of Hydrometeorology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Anthropogenic climate change induced snowpack loss is affecting streamflow predictability, as it becomes less dependent on the initial snowpack conditions and more dependent on meteorological forecasts. We assess future changes to seasonal streamflow predictability over two large river basins, Liard and Athabasca in western Canada, by approximating streamflow response from the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) hydrologic model with the Bayesian regularized neutral network (BRNN) machine learning emulator. We employ the BRNN emulator in a test-bed ensemble streamflow prediction system by treating VIC simulated snow water equivalent (SWE) as a known predictor, and precipitation and temperature from GCMs as ensemble forecasts, thereby isolating the effect of SWE on streamflow predictability. We assess warm-season mean and maximum flow predictability over 2041-2070 and 2071-2100 future periods against 1981-2010 historical period. The results indicate contrasting patterns of change, with the predictive skills for mean flow generally declining for the two basins, and marginally increasing or decreasing for the headwater subbasins. The predictive skill for maximum flow declines for the relatively warmer Athabasca basin, and improves for the colder Liard basin and headwater subbasins. While the decreasing skill for the Athabasca is attributable to substantial loss in SWE, the improvement for the Liard and headwaters can be attributed to an earlier maximum flow timing that reduces the forecast horizon and offsets the effect of SWE loss. Overall, while the future change in SWE does affect the streamflow prediction skill, the loss of SWE alone is not a sufficient condition for the reduction in streamflow predictability.

show abstract

Predictability of Seasonal Streamflow in a Changing Climate in the Sierra Nevada

Abstract: Abstract:The goal of this work is to assess climate change and its impact on the predictability of seasonal (i.e

Cited by 12 publications

References 79 publications

Potential Changes in Runoff of California’s Major Water Supply Watersheds in the 21st Century

Potential Changes in Runoff of California’s Major Water Supply Watersheds in the 21st Century

Projected Changes in Precipitation, Temperature, and Drought across California’s Hydrologic Regions in the 21st Century

Snowpack driven streamflow predictability under future climate: contrasting changes across two western Canadian river basins

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About