Estimation of Watershed Hydrochemical Responses to Future Climate Changes Based on CMIP6 Scenarios in the Tianhe River (China)

Jian Sha, Xue Li and Jingjing Yang
Additional contact information
Jian Sha: Tianjin Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Environment, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China
Xue Li: Tianjin Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Environment, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China
Jingjing Yang: Water Environment Institute, Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, Beijing 100012, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 18, 1-19

Abstract: The impacts of future climate changes on watershed hydrochemical processes were assessed based on the newest Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) in the Tianhe River in the middle area of China. The monthly spatial downscaled outputs of General Circulation Models (GCMs) were used, and a new Python procedure was developed to batch pick up site-scale climate change information. A combined modeling approach was proposed to estimate the responses of the streamflow and Total Dissolved Nitrogen (TDN) fluxes to four climate change scenarios during four future periods. The Long Ashton Research Station Weather Generator (LARS-WG) was used to generate synthetic daily weather series, which were further used in the Regional Nutrient Management (ReNuMa) model for scenario analyses of watershed hydrochemical process responses. The results showed that there would be 2–3% decreases in annual streamflow by the end of this century for most scenarios except SSP 1-26. More streamflow is expected in the summer months, responding to most climate change scenarios. The annual TDN fluxes would continue to increase in the future under the uncontrolled climate scenarios, with more non-point source contributions during the high-flow periods in the summer. The intensities of the TDN flux increasing under the emission-controlled climate scenarios would be relatively moderate, with a turning point around the 2070s, indicating that positive climate policies could be effective for mitigating the impacts of future climate changes on watershed hydrochemical processes.

Keywords: climate change; CMIP6; watershed modeling; ReNuMa; LARS-WG; GWLF (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/18/10102/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/18/10102/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:18:p:10102-:d:632161

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().