scholarly journals On the representation of water reservoir storage and operations in large-scale hydrological models: implications on model parameterization and climate change impact assessments

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 397-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thanh Duc Dang ◽  
A. F. M. Kamal Chowdhury ◽  
Stefano Galelli
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Water Reservoir ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Water Reservoirs ◽  
Reservoir Storage ◽  
Global Circulation Models ◽  
Change Impact

Abstract. During the past decades, the increased impact of anthropogenic interventions on river basins has prompted hydrologists to develop various approaches for representing human–water interactions in large-scale hydrological and land surface models. The simulation of water reservoir storage and operations has received particular attention, owing to the ubiquitous presence of dams. Yet, little is known about (1) the effect of the representation of water reservoirs on the parameterization of hydrological models, and, therefore, (2) the risks associated with potential flaws in the calibration process. To fill in this gap, we contribute a computational framework based on the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model and a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, which we use to calibrate VIC's parameters. An important feature of our framework is a novel variant of VIC's routing model that allows us to simulate the storage dynamics of water reservoirs. Using the upper Mekong river basin as a case study, we calibrate two instances of VIC – with and without reservoirs. We show that both model instances have the same accuracy in reproducing daily discharges (over the period 1996–2005), a result attained by the model without reservoirs by adopting a parameterization that compensates for the absence of these infrastructures. The first implication of this flawed parameter estimation stands in a poor representation of key hydrological processes, such as surface runoff, infiltration, and baseflow. To further demonstrate the risks associated with the use of such a model, we carry out a climate change impact assessment (for the period 2050–2060), for which we use precipitation and temperature data retrieved from five global circulation models (GCMs) and two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5). Results show that the two model instances (with and without reservoirs) provide different projections of the minimum, maximum, and average monthly discharges. These results are consistent across both RCPs. Overall, our study reinforces the message about the correct representation of human–water interactions in large-scale hydrological models.

scholarly journals On the representation of water reservoir storage and operations in large-scale hydrological models: implications on model parameterization and climate change impact assessments

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thanh Duc Dang ◽  
AFM Kamal Chowdhury ◽  
Stefano Galelli
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Water Reservoir ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Water Reservoirs ◽  
Reservoir Storage ◽  
Global Circulation Models ◽  
Change Impact

Abstract. During the past decades, the increased impact of anthropogenic interventions on river basins has prompted hydrologists to develop various approaches for representing human-water interactions in large-scale hydrological and land surface models. The simulation of water reservoir storage and operations has received particular attention, owing to the ubiquitous presence of dams. Yet, little is known about (1) the effect of the representation of water reservoirs on the parameterization of hydrological models, and, therefore, (2) the risks associated to potential flaws in the calibration process. To fill in this gap, we contribute a computational framework based on the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model and a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm, which we use to calibrate VIC's parameters. An important feature of our framework is a novel variant of VIC's routing module that allows us to simulate the storage dynamics of water reservoirs. Using the upper Mekong river basin as a case study, we calibrate two instances of VIC – with and without reservoirs. We show that both model instances have the same accuracy in reproducing daily discharges (over the period 1996–2005); a result attained by the model without reservoirs by adopting a parameterization that compensates for the absence of these infrastructures. The first implication of this flawed parameter estimation stands in a poor representation of key hydrological processes, such as surface runoff, infiltration, and baseflow. To further demonstrate the risks associated to the use of such model, we carry out a climate change impact assessment (for the period 2050–2060), for which we use precipitation and temperature data retrieved from five Global Circulation Models (GCMs) and two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5). Results show that the two model instances (with and without reservoirs) provide different projections of the minimum, maximum, and average monthly discharges. These results are consistent across both RCPs. Overall, our study reinforces the message about the correct representation of human-water interactions in large-scale hydrological models.

scholarly journals High-resolution meteorological forcing data for hydrological modelling and climate change impact analysis in the Mackenzie River Basin

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 629-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zilefac Elvis Asong ◽  
Mohamed Ezzat Elshamy ◽  
Daniel Princz ◽  
Howard Simon Wheater ◽  
John Willard Pomeroy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Impact Assessment ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Climate Change Impact Assessment ◽  
Change Impact

Abstract. Cold region hydrology is very sensitive to the impacts of climate warming. Impacts of warming over recent decades in western Canada include glacier retreat, permafrost thaw, and changing patterns of precipitation, with an increased proportion of winter precipitation falling as rainfall and shorter durations of snow cover, as well as consequent changes in flow regimes. Future warming is expected to continue along these lines. Physically realistic and sophisticated hydrological models driven by reliable climate forcing can provide the capability to assess hydrological responses to climate change. However, the provision of reliable forcing data remains problematic, particularly in data-sparse regions. Hydrological processes in cold regions involve complex phase changes and so are very sensitive to small biases in the driving meteorology, particularly in temperature and precipitation, including precipitation phase. Cold regions often have sparse surface observations, particularly at high elevations that generate a large amount of runoff. This paper aims to provide an improved set of forcing data for large-scale hydrological models for climate change impact assessment. The best available gridded data in Canada are from the high-resolution forecasts of the Global Environmental Multiscale (GEM) atmospheric model and outputs of the Canadian Precipitation Analysis (CaPA), but these datasets have a short historical record. The EU WATCH ERA-Interim reanalysis (WFDEI) has a longer historical record but has often been found to be biased relative to observations over Canada. The aim of this study, therefore, is to blend the strengths of both datasets (GEM-CaPA and WFDEI) to produce a less-biased long-record product (WFDEI-GEM-CaPA) for hydrological modelling and climate change impact assessment over the Mackenzie River Basin. First, a multivariate generalization of the quantile mapping technique was implemented to bias-correct WFDEI against GEM-CaPA at 3 h ×0.125∘ resolution during the 2005–2016 overlap period, followed by a hindcast of WFDEI-GEM-CaPA from 1979. The derived WFDEI-GEM-CaPA data are validated against station observations as a preliminary step to assess their added value. This product is then used to bias-correct climate projections from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis Canadian Regional Climate Model (CanRCM4) between 1950 and 2100 under RCP8.5, and an analysis of the datasets shows that the biases in the original WFDEI product have been removed and the climate change signals in CanRCM4 are preserved. The resulting bias-corrected datasets are a consistent set of historical and climate projection data suitable for large-scale modelling and future climate scenario analysis. The final historical product (WFDEI-GEM-CaPA, 1979–2016) is freely available at the Federated Research Data Repository at https://doi.org/10.20383/101.0111 (Asong et al., 2018), while the original and corrected CanRCM4 data are available at https://doi.org/10.20383/101.0162 (Asong et al., 2019).

scholarly journals High-Resolution Meteorological Forcing Data for Hydrological Modelling and Climate Change Impact Analysis in Mackenzie River Basin

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zilefac Elvis Asong ◽  
Mohamed Ezzat Elshamy ◽  
Daniel Princz ◽  
Howard Simon Wheater ◽  
John W. Pomeroy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Hydrological Modelling ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Cold Regions ◽  
Change Impact

Abstract. Cold regions hydrology is very sensitive to the impacts of climate warming. Impacts of warming over recent decades in western Canada include glacier retreat, permafrost thaw and changing patterns of precipitation, with increased proportion of winter precipitation falling as rainfall and shorter durations of snowcover, and consequent changes in flow regimes. Future warming is expected to continue these trends. Physically realistic and sophisticated hydrological models driven by reliable climate forcing can provide the capability to assess hydrological responses to climate change. However, the provision of reliable forcing data remains problematic. Hydrological processes in cold regions involve complex phase changes and so are very sensitive to small biases in the driving meteorology, particularly in temperature and precipitation, including precipitation phase. Cold regions often have sparse surface observations, particularly at high elevations that generate a large amount of runoff. This paper aims to provide an improved set of forcing data for large scale hydrological models for climate change impact assessment. The best available gridded data in Canada is from the high resolution forecasts of the Global Environmental Multiscale (GEM) atmospheric model and outputs of the Canadian Precipitation Analysis (CaPA) but these datasets have a short historical record. The EU WATCH ERA-Interim reanalysis (WFDEI) has a longer historical record, but has often been found to be biased relative to observations over Canada. The aim of this study, therefore, is to blend the strengths of both datasets (GEM-CaPA and WFDEI) to produce a less-biased long record product (WFDEI-GEM-CaPA) for hydrological modelling and climate change impacts assessment over the Mackenzie River Basin. First, a multivariate generalization of the quantile mapping technique was implemented to bias-correct WFDEI against GEM-CaPA at 3 h × 0.125° resolution during the 2005–2016 overlap period, followed by a hindcast of WFDEI-GEM-CaPA from 1979. The derived WFDEI-GEM-CaPA data are validated against station observations as a preliminary step to assess its added value. This product is then used to bias-correct climate projections from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis Canadian Regional Climate Model (CanRCM4) between 1950–2100 under RCP8.5, and an analysis of the datasets shows the biases in the original WFDEI product have been removed and the climate change signals in CanRCM4 are preserved. The resulting bias-corrected datasets are a consistent set of historical and climate projection data suitable for large-scale modelling and future climate scenario analysis. The final product (WFDEI-GEM-CaPA, 1979–2016) is freely available at the Federated Research Data Repository at http://dx.doi.org/10.20383/101.0111 (Asong et al., 2018) while the original and corrected CanRCM4 data are available at https://doi.org/10.20383/101.0162 (Asong et al., 2019).

Communicating water-related climate change hazards to local stakeholders

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Müller ◽  
Petra Döll
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Management ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
Biosphere Reserve ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Model Ensemble ◽  
Hydrological Hazards ◽  
Local Stakeholders ◽  
Change Impact ◽  
The Impact

<p>Due to climate change, the water cycle is changing which requires to adapt water management in many regions. The transdisciplinary project KlimaRhön aims at assessing water-related risks and developing adaptation measures in water management in the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Rhön in Central Germany. One of the challenges is to inform local stakeholders about hydrological hazards in in the biosphere reserve, which has an area of only 2433 km² and for which no regional hydrological simulations are available. To overcome the lack of local simulations of the impact of climate change on water resources, existing simulations by a number of global hydrological models (GHMs) were evaluated for the study area. While the coarse model resolution of 0.5°x0.5° (55 km x 55 km at the equator) is certainly problematic for the small study area, the advantage is that both the uncertainty of climate simulations and hydrological models can be taken into account to provide a best estimate of future hazards and their (large) uncertainties. This is different from most local hydrological climate change impact assessments, where only one hydrological model is used, which leads to an underestimation of future uncertainty as different hydrological models translate climatic changes differently into hydrological changes and, for example, mostly do not take into account the effect of changing atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> on evapotranspiration and thus runoff.   </p><p>The global climate change impact simulations were performed in a consistent manner by various international modeling groups following a protocol developed by ISIMIP (ISIMIP 2b, www.isimip.org); the simulation results are freely available for download. We processed, analyzed and visualized the results of the multi-model ensemble, which consists of eight GHMs driven by the bias-adjusted output of four general circulation models. The ensemble of potential changes of total runoff and groundwater recharge were calculated for two 30-year future periods relative to a reference period, analyzing annual and seasonal means as well as interannual variability. Moreover, the two representative concentration pathways RCP 2.6 and 8.5 were chosen to inform stakeholders about two possible courses of anthropogenic emissions.</p><p>To communicate the results to local stakeholders effectively, the way to present modeling results and their uncertainty is crucial. The visualization and textual/oral presentation should not be overwhelming but comprehensive, comprehensible and engaging. It should help the stakeholder to understand the likelihood of particular hazards that can be derived from multi-model ensemble projections. In this contribution, we present the communication approach we applied during a stakeholder workshop as well as its evaluation by the stakeholders.</p>

scholarly journals Climate change impact on water resource extremes in a headwater region of the Tarim basin in China

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. 3511-3527 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Liu ◽  
P. Willems ◽  
X. L. Pan ◽  
An. M. Bao ◽  
X. Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Ground Water ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
Snow Accumulation ◽  
Tarim River Basin ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Snow Melting ◽  
Change Impact ◽  
Ipcc Sres

Abstract. The Tarim river basin in China is a huge inland arid basin, which is expected to be highly vulnerable to climatic changes, given that most water resources originate from the upper mountainous headwater regions. This paper focuses on one of these headwaters: the Kaidu river subbasin. The climate change impact on the surface and ground water resources of that basin and more specifically on the hydrological extremes were studied by using both lumped and spatially distributed hydrological models, after simulation of the IPCC SRES greenhouse gas scenarios till the 2050s. The models include processes of snow and glacier melting. The climate change signals were extracted from the grid-based results of general circulation models (GCMs) and applied on the station-based, observed historical data using a perturbation approach. For precipitation, the time series perturbation involves both a wet-day frequency perturbation and a quantile perturbation to the wet-day rainfall intensities. For temperature and potential evapotranspiration, the climate change signals only involve quantile based changes. The perturbed series were input into the hydrological models and the impacts on the surface and ground water resources studied. The range of impact results (after considering 36 GCM runs) were summarized in high, mean, and low results. It was found that due to increasing precipitation in winter, snow accumulation increases in the upper mountainous areas. Due to temperature rise, snow melting rates increase and the snow melting periods are pushed forward in time. Although the qualitive impact results are highly consistent among the different GCM runs considered, the precise quantitative impact results varied significantly depending on the GCM run and the hydrological model.

scholarly journals What can we learn from long-term groundwater data to improve climate change impact studies?

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 7621-7655 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Stoll ◽  
H. J. Hendricks Franssen ◽  
R. Barthel ◽  
W. Kinzelbach
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Groundwater Resources ◽  
Groundwater Dynamics ◽  
Impact Studies ◽  
Change Impact

Abstract. Future risks for groundwater resources, due to global change are usually analyzed by driving hydrological models with the outputs of climate models. However, this model chain is subject to considerable uncertainties. Given the high uncertainties it is essential to identify the processes governing the groundwater dynamics, as these processes are likely to affect groundwater resources in the future, too. Information about the dominant mechanisms can be achieved by the analysis of long-term data, which are assumed to provide insight in the reaction of groundwater resources to changing conditions (weather, land use, water demand). Referring to this, a dataset of 30 long-term time series of precipitation dominated groundwater systems in northern Switzerland and southern Germany is collected. In order to receive additional information the analysis of the data is carried out together with hydrological model simulations. High spatio-temporal correlations, even over large distances could be detected and are assumed to be related to large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns. As a result it is suggested to prefer innovative weather-type-based downscaling methods to other stochastic downscaling approaches. In addition, with the help of a qualitative procedure to distinguish between meteorological and anthropogenic causes it was possible to identify processes which dominated the groundwater dynamics in the past. It could be shown that besides the meteorological conditions, land use changes, pumping activity and feedback mechanisms governed the groundwater dynamics. Based on these findings, recommendations to improve climate change impact studies are suggested.

scholarly journals Climate change impact on streamflow in large-scale river basins: projections and their uncertainties sourced from GCMs and RCP scenarios

2018 ◽  
Vol 379 ◽  
pp. 139-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga N. Nasonova ◽  
Yeugeniy M. Gusev ◽  
Evgeny E. Kovalev ◽  
Georgy V. Ayzel
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
River Runoff ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
River Basins ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Rcp Scenarios ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Change Impact

Abstract. Climate change impact on river runoff was investigated within the framework of the second phase of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP2) using a physically-based land surface model Soil Water – Atmosphere – Plants (SWAP) (developed in the Institute of Water Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and meteorological projections (for 2006–2099) simulated by five General Circulation Models (GCMs) (including GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES, IPSL-CM5A-LR, MIROC-ESM-CHEM, and NorESM1-M) for each of four Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, and RCP8.5). Eleven large-scale river basins were used in this study. First of all, SWAP was calibrated and validated against monthly values of measured river runoff with making use of forcing data from the WATCH data set and all GCMs' projections were bias-corrected to the WATCH. Then, for each basin, 20 projections of possible changes in river runoff during the 21st century were simulated by SWAP. Analysis of the obtained hydrological projections allowed us to estimate their uncertainties resulted from application of different GCMs and RCP scenarios. On the average, the contribution of different GCMs to the uncertainty of the projected river runoff is nearly twice larger than the contribution of RCP scenarios. At the same time the contribution of GCMs slightly decreases with time.

scholarly journals Estimating the Relative Uncertainties Sourced from GCMs and Hydrological Models in Modeling Climate Change Impact on Runoff

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Teng ◽  
Jai Vaze ◽  
Francis H. S. Chiew ◽  
Biao Wang ◽  
Jean-Michel Perraud
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
Daily Rainfall ◽  
Low Flow ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Rainfall Runoff ◽  
Runoff Modeling ◽  
Change Impact ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Climate Series

Abstract This paper assesses the relative uncertainties from GCMs and from hydrological models in modeling climate change impact on runoff across southeast Australia. Five lumped conceptual daily rainfall–runoff models are used to model runoff using historical daily climate series and using future climate series obtained by empirically scaling the historical climate series informed by simulations from 15 GCMs. The majority of the GCMs project a drier future for this region, particularly in the southern parts, and this is amplified as a bigger reduction in the runoff. The results indicate that the uncertainty sourced from the GCMs is much larger than the uncertainty in the rainfall–runoff models. The variability in the climate change impact on runoff results for one rainfall–runoff model informed by 15 GCMs (an about 28%–35% difference between the minimum and maximum results for mean annual, mean seasonal, and high runoff) is considerably larger than the variability in the results between the five rainfall–runoff models informed by 1 GCM (a less than 7% difference between the minimum and maximum results). The difference between the rainfall–runoff modeling results is larger in the drier regions for scenarios of big declines in future rainfall and in the low-flow characteristics. The rainfall–runoff modeling here considers only the runoff sensitivity to changes in the input climate data (primarily daily rainfall), and the difference between the hydrological modeling results is likely to be greater if potential changes in the climate–runoff relationship in a warmer and higher CO2 environment are modeled.

scholarly journals Climate change impact on river flow extremes in the Upper Blue Nile River basin

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-781 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hadush K. Meresa ◽  
Mulusew T. Gatachew
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
River Flow ◽  
Nile River ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Hydrological Extremes ◽  
Dry Spell ◽  
Change Impact ◽  
Blue Nile River Basin

Abstract This paper aims to study climate change impact on the hydrological extremes and projected precipitation extremes in far future (2071–2100) period in the Upper Blue Nile River basin (UBNRB). The changes in precipitation extremes were derived from the most recent AFROCORDEX climate data base projection scenarios compared to the reference period (1971–2000). The climate change impacts on the hydrological extremes were evaluated using three conceptual hydrological models: GR4 J, HBV, and HMETS; and two objective functions: NSE and LogNSE. These hydrological models are calibrated and validated in the periods 1971–2000 and 2001–2010, respectively. The results indicate that the wet/dry spell will significantly decrease/increase due to climate change in some sites of the region, while in others, there is increase/decrease in wet/dry spell but not significantly, respectively. The extreme river flow will be less attenuated and more variable in terms of magnitude, and more irregular in terms of seasonal occurrence than at present. Low flows are projected to increase most prominently for lowland sites, due to the combined effects of projected decreases in Belg and Bega precipitation, and projected increases in evapotranspiration that will reduce residual soil moisture in Bega and Belg seasons.

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