Streamflow Trends and Climate Variability Impacts in Poyang Lake Basin, China

Under the background of global warming, does the effect of the rising global surface temperature accelerate the hydrological cycle? To address this issue, we use the hydro-climatic data from five sub-basins in Poyang Lake basin in the southeast China over the past 50 years, to investigate the annual and seasonal trends of streamflow and the correlations between streamflow and climatic variables. The Theil–Sen Approach and the non-parametric Mann–Kendall test are applied to identify the trends in the annual and seasonal streamflow, precipitation and evapotranspiration series. It was found that annual and seasonal streamflow of all the stations had increasing trends except Lijiadu station in wet season. Only 37.5% hydro-stations in annual streamflow increased significantly, while most stations increased at 95% significance level in dry season. Trends in annual and seasonal precipitation during the whole period were generally not as significant as those in evapotranspiration. The correlations between streamflow and climate variables (precipitation and evapotranspiration) were detected by the Pearson’s test. The results showed that streamflow in the Poyang Lake basin are more sensitive to changes in precipitation than potential evapotranspiration.