Impact of Climate Variability on Runoff in the North-Central United States
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19, Issue 1
Abstract
Large changes in runoff in the north-central United States have occurred during the past century, with larger floods and increases in runoff tending to occur from the 1970s to the present. The attribution of these changes is a subject of much interest. Long-term precipitation, temperature, and streamflow records were used to compare changes in precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET) to changes in runoff within 25 stream basins. The basins studied were organized into four groups, each one representing basins similar in topography, climate, and historic patterns of runoff. Precipitation, PET, and runoff data were adjusted for near-decadal scale variability to examine longer-term changes. A nonlinear water-balance analysis shows that changes in precipitation and PET explain the majority of multidecadal spatial/temporal variability of runoff and flood magnitudes, with precipitation being the dominant driver. Historical changes in climate and runoff in the region appear to be more consistent with complex transient shifts in seasonal climatic conditions than with gradual climate change. A portion of the unexplained variability likely stems from land-use change.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The U.S. Geological Survey Global Change Research Program funded this work. Kevin Baker, USGS, performed the precipitation and temperature calculations in GIS to determine precipitation and temperature time series for individual basins. Robert Hirsch and Greg McCabe of the USGS and two anonymous referees provided valuable reviews.
References
Ault, T. R., and St. George, S. (2010). “The magnitude of decadal and multidecadal variability in North American precipitation.” J. Clim., 23(4), 842–850.
Bates, B. C., Kundzewicz, Z. W., Wu, S., and Palutikof, J. P., eds. (2008). “Climate change and water.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Technical Paper VI, IPCC Secretariat, Geneva, 〈http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/climate-change-water-en.pdf〉.
Cayan, D. R., Dettinger, M. D., Diaz, H. F., and Graham, N. E. (1998). “Decadal variability of precipitation over western North America.” J. Clim., 11(12), 3148–3166.
Cook, B. I., Seager, R., and Miller, R. (2011). “Atmospheric circulation anomalies during two persistent North American droughts: 1932–1939 and 1948–1957.” Clim. Dynam., 36(11–12), 2339–2355.
Deser, C., and Blackmon, M. L. (1993). “Surface climate variations over the North Atlantic Ocean during winter: 1900–1989.” J. Clim., 6(9), 1743–1753.
Easterling, D. R., Karl, T. R., Mason, E. H., Hughes, P. Y., and Bowman, D. P. (1996). “United States Historical Climatology Network (U.S. HCN) monthly temperature and precipitation data.”, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy, Oak Ridge, TN.
Garbrecht, J. D., and Rossel, F. E. (2002). “Decade-scale precipitation increase in Great Plains at end of 20th century.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 64–75.
Guido, Z. (2010). “Warmer means drier: Comparing the 2000s drought to the 1950s drought.” SW Climate Outlook, 9(2), 3–4.
Gutowski, W. J., et al. (2008). “Causes of observed changes in extremes and projections of future changes.” Weather and climate extremes in a changing climate, CCSP synthesis and assessment product 3.3, U.S. Climate Change Science Program, 81–116.
Hamon, W. R. (1961). “Estimating potential evapotranspiration.” Proc. ASCE, J. Hydraul. Div., 87(3), 107–120.
Hirsch, R. M., and Ryberg, K. R. (2012). “Has the magnitude of floods across the USA changed with global CO2 levels?” Hydrol. Sci. J., 57(1), 1–9.
Hoerling, M., Eischeid, J., Easterling, D., Peterson, T., and Webb, R. (2010). “Understanding and explaining hydro-climate variations at Devils Lake.” A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Assessment, Silver Spring, MD.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2007). “Climate change 2007: The physical science basis.” Contribution of Working Group I to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, S. Solomon and D. Qin, et al., eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York.
Laird, K. R., et al. (2003). “Lake sediments record large-scale shifts in moisture regimes across the northern prairies of North America during the past two millennia.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 100(5), 2483–2488.
Lins, H. F., and Slack, J. R. (1999). “Streamflow trends in the United States.” Geophys. Res. Lett., 26(2), 227–230.
Lu, J., Sun, G., McNulty, S. G., and Amatya, D. M. (2005). “A comparison of six potential evapotranspiration methods for regional use in the southeastern United States.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 41(3), 621–633.
McCabe, G. J., Palecki, M. A., and Betancourt, J. L. (2004). “Pacific and Atlantic Ocean influences on multidecadal drought frequency in the United States.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 101(12), 4136–4141.
McCabe, G. J., and Wolock, D. M. (2002). “A step increase in streamflow in the conterminous United States.” Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(24), 2185.
Menne, M. J., and Vose, R. S. (2011). “Long-term daily and monthly climate records from stations across the contiguous United States.” United States Historical Climatology Network, 〈http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ushcn.html〉 (Aug. 24, 2011).
Milly, P. C. D., Dunne, K. A., and Vecchia, A. V. (2005). “Global pattern of trends in streamflow and water availability in a changing climate.” Nature, 438(7066), 347–350.
Oudin, L., et al. (2005). “Which potential evapotranspiration input for lumped rainfall-runoff model? Part 2. Towards a simple and efficient potential evapotranspiration model for rainfall-runoff modeling.” J. Hydrol., 303(1–4), 290–306.
Pielke, R. A., Sr. (2005). “Land use and climate change.” Science, 310(5754), 1625–1626.
Pielke, R. A., et al. (2011). “Land use/land cover changes and climate: Modeling analysis and observational evidence.” WIREs Clim. Change, 2(6), 828–850.
Schilling, K. E., Chan, K.-S., Liu, H., and Zhang, Y.-K. (2010). “Quantifying the effect of land use land cover change on increasing discharge in the Upper Mississippi River.” J. Hydrol., 387(3–4), 343–345.
Schilling, K. E., Jha, M. K., Zhang, Y.-K., Gassman, P. H., and Wolter, C. F. (2008). “Impact of land-use and land cover change on the water balance of a large agricultural watershed: Historical effects and future directions.” Water Resour. Res., 44(7), W00A09.
Schubert, S. D., Suarez, M. J., Pegion, P. J., Koster, R. D., and Bacmeister, J. T. (2004). “On the cause of the 1930s Dust Bowl.” Science, 303(5665), 1855–1859.
Shapley, M. D., Johnson, W. C., Engstrom, D. R., and Osterkamp, W. R. (2005). “Late Holocene flooding and drought in the Northern Great Plains, reconstructed from tree rings, lake sediments and ancient shorelines.” The Holocene, 15(1), 29–41.
Small, D., and Islam, S. (2008). “Low frequency variability in fall precipitation across the United States.” Water Resour. Res., 44(4), 13.
Small, D., and Islam, S. (2009). “A synoptic view of trends and decadal variations in autumn precipitation across the United States from 1948 to 2004.” J. Geophys. Res., 114(D10102), 14.
Thornthwaite, C. W., and Holzman, B. (1942). “Measurement of evaporation from land and water sources.” U.S. Dept. Agri. Tech. Bull., 817, 143.
Tomer, M. D., and Schilling, K. E. (2009). “A simple approach to distinguish land-use and climate-change effects on watershed hydrology.” J. Hydrol., 376(1–2), 24033.
Trenberth, K. E. (1999). “Conceptual framework for changes of extremes of the hydrological cycle with climate change.” Clim. Change, 42(1), 327–339.
U.S. Geological Survey. (2011). “USGS water data for the nation.” 〈http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis〉 (Apr. 6, 2011).
Vecchia, A. V. (2008). “Climate simulation and flood risk analysis for 2008–40 for Devils Lake, North Dakota.”, Reston, VA 〈http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2008/5011/〉.
Wang, H., et al. (2009). “Attribution of the seasonality and regionality in climate trends over the United States during 1950–2000.” J. Clim., 22(10), 2571–2590.
Yang, S., Ding, X., Zheng, D., and Li, Q. (2007). “Depiction of the variations of Great Plains precipitation and its relationship with tropical central-eastern Pacific SST.” J. Appl. Meteorol. and Climatol., 46(2), 136–153.
Zhang, Y.-K., and Schilling, K. E. (2006). “Increasing streamflow and baseflow in Mississippi River since the 1940s: Effect of land-use change.” J. Hydrol., 324(1–4), 412–422.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19 • Issue 1 • January 2014
Pages: 148 - 158
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 27, 2012
Accepted: Dec 21, 2012
Published online: Dec 26, 2012
Discussion open until: May 26, 2013
Published in print: Jan 1, 2014
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.