Comprehensive evaluation of hydrological models for climate change impact assessment in the Upper Yangtze River Basin, China

Shanshan Wen (), Buda Su (), Yanjun Wang (), Jianqing Zhai, Hemin Sun, Ziyan Chen, Jinlong Huang, Anqian Wang and Tong Jiang ()
Additional contact information
Shanshan Wen: Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology
Buda Su: Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology
Yanjun Wang: Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology
Jianqing Zhai: National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration
Hemin Sun: Beijing Meteorological Bureau
Ziyan Chen: Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology
Jinlong Huang: Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology
Anqian Wang: Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Tong Jiang: Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology

Climatic Change, 2020, vol. 163, issue 3, No 5, 1207-1226

Abstract: Abstract Climate change has substantial impacts on regional hydrology in the major river basins. To figure out such latent hydrological impacts of changing climate, more reliable hydrological simulations are imperative. In this study, we evaluated the impacts of climate change on hydrological regime in the Upper Yangtze River Basin based on four downscaled and bias-corrected Global Climate Model outputs from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 under four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, and RCP8.5) driving three hydrological models. Two model evaluation approaches were applied: simple and comprehensive. The comprehensive approach was used to evaluate models in the historical period, optimizing objective function at four gauges, and hydrological models were weighted for impact assessment based on their performance. In such a way, projected streamflow time series are obtained under different emission scenarios. Results show that the annual average discharge is projected to increase by 4.1–10.5% under the RCP scenarios at the end of twenty-first century relative to the reference period (1970–1999). Moreover, the high flow is projected to increase and the low flow to decrease indicating a higher probability of flood and drought occurrence in the basin. The severity of floods and droughts may increase. In comparison with the simple one-site model evaluation approach, the comprehensive method reveals that the anticipated extreme flow events would be less severe, and annual mean discharge slightly lower. The projected results imply that application of the comprehensive model evaluation approach could narrow the simulated spreads of projections significantly, and might provide more credible results.

Keywords: Hydrological modeling; Discharge; Comprehensive model evaluation; Model weighting; Upper Yangtze River Basin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-020-02929-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:climat:v:163:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-020-02929-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-020-02929-6

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().