Assessing the Impacts of Future Climate Change on Hydrology in Huang-Huai-Hai Region in China Using the PRECIS and VIC Models
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 9
Abstract
The climate change impact on hydrology in China’s Huang-Huai-Hai (H-H-H) region was assessed in this study. Both variations in mean monthly and annual runoff and occurrences of extreme events including flood and drought were examined for two future periods (2001–2030 and 2016–2045) in the whole region. The projected daily maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation from the PRECIS (providing regional climates for impacts studies) regional climate model were used to drive the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) hydrology model. Variable infiltration capacity was run over a regional domain of 408 grid points at a spatial resolution of . The result shows that PRECIS projects increase in both future temperature (0.8–1.5°C) and precipitation (3.5–7.3%) in the H-H-H region under A2 and B2 scenarios of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES). Over the entire H-H-H region, VIC projects increase 11.3 and 13.7% in mean annual runoff by the 2015s (2001–2030) and 2030s (2016–2045) under the A2 scenario, respectively. Such increases would be 5.6 and 5.9% under the B2 scenario. The spatial temporal variation of mean annual runoff is likely uneven. For example, the mean annual runoff could decrease by 10% in the south of the Haihe River basin by the 2015s under the B2 scenario. However, an increase of 10% is likely to occur in the northeast part of the same basin. For the mean monthly runoff, the increase would be significant from July through October, and the runoff could exhibit a great interannual variability. Extreme events such as droughts and severe floods could become more frequent in certain areas of the H-H-H region. The occurrence of drought events is likely to increase in summer and autumn seasons in most areas of the H-H-H region. Severe floods might also frequently occur in the Huaihe River basin.
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Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (Grant No. 2010CB428405), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41001012), the Special Public Sector Research Program of Ministry of Water Resources (Grant No. 200701039), the Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of PR China (Grant No. 201161), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2009B00114). The authors are very grateful for the PRECIS climate scenarios data set provided by Research Associate Yin-long Xu of Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The authors acknowledge the modeling groups for providing their data for analysis, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI), and the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP’s) coupled model intercomparison project for collecting and archiving the model output, organizing the model data analysis activity. The data have been collected, analyzed, and provided by National Climate Center.
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18 • Issue 9 • September 2013
Pages: 1077 - 1087
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 5, 2010
Accepted: Apr 10, 2012
Published online: Apr 14, 2012
Discussion open until: Sep 14, 2012
Published in print: Sep 1, 2013
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