Responses of runoff to historical and future climate variability over China

Abstract

China has suffered some of the effects of global warming, and one of the potential implications of climate warming is the 10 alteration of the temporal-spatial patterns of water resources. Based on the long-term water budget data and climate projections from 28 Global Climate Models (GCMs) of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), this study investigated the responses of runoff (R) to historical and future climate variability in China at both grid and catchment scales using the Budyko-based elasticity method. Results show that there is a large spatial variation in precipitation (P) elasticity (from 1.2 to 3.3) and potential evaporation (PET) elasticity (from -2.3 to -0.2) across China. The P 15 elasticity is larger in northeast and western China than in southern China, while the opposite occurs for PET elasticity. The catchment properties elasticity of R appears to have a strong non-linear relationship with the mean annual aridity index and tends to be more significant in more arid regions. For the period 1960-2012, the climate contribution to R ranges from -2.4 % a -1 to 3.3 % a -1 across China, with the negative contribution in the North China plain and the positive contribution in western China and some parts of the southwest. The results of climate projections indicate that although there is large uncertainty 20 involved in the 28 GCMs, most project a consistent change in P (or PET) in China at the annual scale. For the period 2071-2100, the mean annual P will likely increase in most parts of China, especially the western regions, while the mean annual PET will likely increase in all of China, particularly the southern regions. Furthermore, greater increases are projected for higher emission scenarios. Overall, due to climate change, the arid regions and humid regions of China will likely become wetter and drier in the period 2071-2100, respectively (relative to the baseline 1971-2000).25

SESR-based Identification of Flash Drought and Multivariate Drought Risk Probability Assessment in the Pearl River Basin, China

“…The Mann-Kendall (M-K) test is a non-parametric statistical method for testing the trend of hydrometeorological data ( Dawood 2017;Kendall 1975;Mann 1945). The M-K method has the advantages of not assuming any distribution forms for the data and not being affected by interference from outliers, and is widely used for detecting the significance of long-term trends in hydrometeorological variables (Gocic and Trajkovic 2013;Li et al 2021;Mekonen and Berlie 2020;Wu et al 2018). In this study, we apply the M-K method to detect the statistical significance of the trends in FD characteristics (D, I and P) at the 5% significance level (a = 0.05).…”

Impact Classification of Future Land Use and Climate Changes on Flow Regimes in the Yellow River Source Region, China

“…Numerous studies have evaluated regional hydrological response to future climate change by combination of hydrological models and scenarios based on climate model outputs (Masood et al, 2015;Wang, Zhang, Jin, et al, 2012;Wu et al, 2018;Zhang, Fu, et al, 2015). For example, Wang, Zhang, Jin, et al (2012) found that the annual runoff of China from 2021 to 2050 would probably increase 3%-10% compared with 1961-1990 by VIC model.…”