Analysis of the effect of climate change on the Nakdong river stream flow using indicators of hydrological alteration |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. Nakdong River Environmental Research Center, National Institute of Environmental Research, Gyeongbuk 717-873, Republic of Korea;2. Department of Environmental Engineering, Pukyong National University, Busan 608-737, South Korea;3. Watershed Environmental Research Lab, Water and Environmental Management System Co., Busan 609-340, South Korea |
| |
Abstract: | This study models the effect of climate change on runoff in southeast Korea using the TANK conceptual rainfall-runoff model. The results are assessed using the indicators of hydrological alteration (IHA) developed by U.S. Nature Conservancy. Future climate time series are obtained by scaling historical series, provided by four global climate models (GCMs, IPCC, 2007) and three greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions scenarios (IPCC, 2000), to reflect a maximum increase of 3.6 °C in the average surface air temperature and 33% in the annual precipitation. To this end, the spatio-temporal change factor method is used, which considers changes in the future mean seasonal rainfall and potential evapotranspiration as well as the daily rainfall distribution. In this study, the variance range for precipitation is from +3.55% to +33.44% compared to the present for years between 2071 and 2100. The variance range for the daily mean temperature is estimated between +1.59 °C and +3.58 °C. Although the simulation results from different GCMs and GHG emissions scenarios indicate different responses of the flows to the climate change, the majority of modeling results show that there will be more runoff in southeast Korea in the future. According to the analysis results, the predicted impacts of hydrological alteration caused by climate change on the aquatic ecosystem are as follows: 1) an increase in the availability of aquatic ecosystem habitats in Nakdong River in future summers and winters, 2) an increase in stress on the aquatic ecosystem due to extremely high stream flow, 3) an increase in the stress duration of flood events for the Nakdong River downstream and 4) an increase in aquatic ecosystem stress caused by rapid increases or decreases in stream flow. |
| |
Keywords: | Aquatic ecosystem stress Climate change Hydrological alteration Stream flow |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |
|