Hydrologic Sensitivities of Colorado River Runoff to Changes in Precipitation and Temperature*

Journal of Hydrometeorology - Tập 13 Số 3 - Trang 932-949 - 2012
J. A. Vano1,2,3,4, Tapash Das1,2,3,4, Dennis P. Lettenmaier1,2,3,4
1 Division of Climate, Atmospheric Sciences, and Physical Oceanography, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California
2CH2M HILL, San Diego, California.
3Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
4partment of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Box 352700, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195.

Tóm tắt

Abstract The Colorado River is the primary water source for much of the rapidly growing southwestern United States. Recent studies have projected reductions in Colorado River flows from less than 10% to almost 50% by midcentury because of climate change—a range that has clouded potential management responses. These differences in projections are attributable to variations in climate model projections but also to differing land surface model (LSM) sensitivities. This second contribution to uncertainty—specifically, variations in LSM runoff change with respect to precipitation (elasticities) and temperature (sensitivities)—are evaluated here through comparisons of multidecadal simulations from five commonly used LSMs (Catchment, Community Land Model, Noah, Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting model, and Variable Infiltration Capacity model) all applied over the Colorado River basin at ⅛° latitude by longitude spatial resolution. The annual elasticity of modeled runoff (fractional change in annual runoff divided by fractional change in annual precipitation) at Lees Ferry ranges from two to six for the different LSMs. Elasticities generally are higher in lower precipitation and/or runoff regimes; hence, the highest values are for models biased low in runoff production, and the range of elasticities is reduced to two to three when adjusted to current runoff climatology. Annual temperature sensitivities (percent change in annual runoff per degree change in annual temperature) range from declines of 2% to as much as 9% per degree Celsius increase at Lees Ferry. For some LSMs, small areas, primarily at midelevation, have increasing runoff with increasing temperature; however, on a spatial basis, most sensitivities are negative.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

Anderson, 1973

Barnett, 2009, Sustainable water deliveries from the Colorado River in a changing climate, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 106, 7334, 10.1073/pnas.0812762106

Blinn, 2005

Boone, 2004, The Rhône-Aggregation Land Surface Scheme intercomparison project: An overview, J. Climate, 17, 187, 10.1175/1520-0442(2004)017<0187:TRLSSI>2.0.CO;2

Burnash, 1973

Cayan, 2010, Future dryness in the southwest US and the hydrology of the early 21st century drought, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 107, 21 271, 10.1073/pnas.0912391107

Christensen, 2007, A multimodel ensemble approach to assessment of climate change impacts on the hydrology and water resources of the Colorado River basin, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 3, 1

Christensen, 2004, The effects of climate change on the hydrology and water resources of the Colorado River Basin, Climatic Change, 62, 337, 10.1023/B:CLIM.0000013684.13621.1f

Donohue, 2010, Assessing the ability of potential evaporation formulations to capture the dynamics in evaporative demand within a changing climate, J. Hydrol., 386, 186, 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2010.03.020

Dooge, 1992, Sensitivity of runoff to climate change: A Hortonian approach, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 73, 2013, 10.1175/1520-0477(1992)073<2013:SORTCC>2.0.CO;2

Dooge, 1999, A simple model for estimating the sensitivity of runoff to long-termchanges in precipitation without a change in vegetation, Adv. Water Resour., 23, 153, 10.1016/S0309-1708(99)00019-6

Ducharne, 2000, A catchment-based approach to modeling land surface processes in a general circulation model 2. Parameter estimation and model demonstration, J. Geophys. Res., 105, 24 823, 10.1029/2000JD900328

Easterling, 1997, Maximum and minimum temperature trends for the globe, Science, 227, 364, 10.1126/science.277.5324.364

Elsner, 2010, Implications of 21st century climate change for the hydrology of Washington State, Climatic Change, 102, 225, 10.1007/s10584-010-9855-0

Fu, 2007, A two-parameter climate elasticity of streamflow index to assess climate change effects on annual streamflow, Water Resour. Res., 43, W11419, 10.1029/2007WR005890

Gardner, 2009, Assessing the effect of climate change on mean annual runoff, J. Hydrol., 379, 351, 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2009.10.021

Hamlet, 2005, Production of temporally consistent gridded precipitation and temperature fields for the continental United States, J. Hydrometeor., 6, 330, 10.1175/JHM420.1

Henderson-Sellers, 1995, The Project for Intercomparison of Land Surface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS): Phases 2 and 3, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 76, 489, 10.1175/1520-0477(1995)076<0489:TPFIOL>2.0.CO;2

Hoerling, 2007, Past peak water in the southwest, Southwest Hydrol., 6, 18

Hoerling, 2009, Reconciling projections of Colorado River streamflow, Southwest Hydrol., 8, 20

Jeton, 1996

Kavetski, 2011, Numerical troubles in conceptual hydrology: Approximations, absurdities and impact on hypothesis testing, Hydrol. Processes, 25, 661, 10.1002/hyp.7899

Koster, 1997, The interplay between transpiration and runoff formulations in land surface schemes used with atmospheric models, J. Climate, 10, 1578, 10.1175/1520-0442(1997)010<1578:TIBTAR>2.0.CO;2

Koster, 2000, A catchment-based approach to modeling land surface processes in a general circulation model 1. Model structure, J. Geophys. Res., 105, 24 809, 10.1029/2000JD900327

Liang, 1994, A simple hydrologically based model of land surface water and energy fluxes for general circulation models, J. Geophys. Res., 99, 14 415, 10.1029/94JD00483

Livneh, 2010, Noah LSM snow model diagnostics and enhancements, J. Hydrometeor., 11, 721, 10.1175/2009JHM1174.1

Lohmann, 1996, A large-scale horizontal routing model to be coupled to land surface parameterization schemes, Tellus, 48, 708, 10.3402/tellusa.v48i5.12200

Lohmann, 1998, Regional scale hydrology: I. Formulation of the VIC-2L model coupled to a routing model, Hydrol. Sci. J., 43, 131, 10.1080/02626669809492107

Lohmann, 2004, Streamflow and water balance intercomparisons of four land surface models in the North American Land Data Assimilation System project, J. Geophys. Res., 109, D07S91, 10.1029/2003JD003517

Maurer, 2002, A long-term hydrologically based data set of land surface fluxes and states for the conterminous United States, J. Climate, 15, 3237, 10.1175/1520-0442(2002)015<3237:ALTHBD>2.0.CO;2

McMahon, 1982

Milly, 2005, Global pattern of trends in streamflow and water availability in a changing climate, Nature, 438, 347, 10.1038/nature04312

Mitchell, 2004, The multi-institution North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS): Utilizing multiple GCIP products and partners in a continental distributed hydrological modeling system, J. Geophys. Res., 109, D07S90, 10.1029/2003JD003823

Nijssen, 2001, Global retrospective estimation of soil moisture using the Variable Infiltration Capacity land surface model, 1980–1993, J. Climate, 14, 1790, 10.1175/1520-0442(2001)014<1790:GREOSM>2.0.CO;2

Oleson, 2004

Oleson, 2007

Oleson, 2008, Improvements to the Community Land Model and their impact on the hydrological cycle, J. Geophys. Res., 113, G01021, 10.1029/2007JG000563

Overpeck, 2010, Dry times ahead, Science, 328, 1642, 10.1126/science.1186591

Pitman, 1999, Key results and implications from phase 1(c) of the Project for Intercomparison of Land-surface Parameterization Schemes, Climate Dyn., 15, 673, 10.1007/s003820050309

Ray, 2008

Sankarasubramanian, 2001, Climate elasticity of streamflow in the United States, Water Resour. Res., 37, 1771, 10.1029/2000WR900330

Schaake, 1990

Seager, 2007, Model projections of an imminent transition to a more arid climate in southwestern North America, Science, 316, 1181, 10.1126/science.1139601

Solomon, 2007

Thornton, 1999, An improved algorithm for estimating incident daily solar radiation from measurements of temperature, humidity, and precipitation, Agric. For. Meteor., 93, 211, 10.1016/S0168-1923(98)00126-9

USBR, 2010

Wang, 2009, Multimodel ensemble reconstruction of drought over the continental United States, J. Climate, 22, 2694, 10.1175/2008JCLI2586.1

Wei, 2012, Improvement of the Noah land surface model for warm season processes: Evaluation of water and energy flux simulation, Hydrol. Processes

Wood, 2006, A test bed for new seasonal hydrologic forecasting approaches in the western United States, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 87, 1699, 10.1175/BAMS-87-12-1699

Zheng, 2009, Responses of streamflow to climate and land surface change in the headwaters of the Yellow River Basin, Water Resour. Res., 45, W00A19, 10.1029/2007WR006665

Thông tin
Thông tin xuất bản

Journal of Hydrometeorology

Tập 13 Số 3

932-949

Thông tin tác giả