MULTI-SCALE MODELING OF THE RESPONSE OF RUNOFF TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Abstract

With global warming, climate change has tremendously changed the hydrological processes. To discover the non-linear trend of the natural runoff and its response to precipitation and temperature in the Yellow River Basin, the non-linear relationships among the runoff, precipitation and temperature are analyzed by the wavelet decomposition and reconstruction methods, partial correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The main findings of this study are: (1) The annual natural runoff, precipitation and temperature have the similar periods (27-year, 12-year), which indicates that the periodicity of the natural annual runoff has closely relationship with the regional climate change. (2) The annual runoff, precipitation and temperature exhibit five patterns non-linear variations at five time scales (1, 2, 4, 8, 16 years), that is to say, their non-linear trends are scale-dependent with time. (3) The annual natural runoff has a significant positive correlation with the precipitation and has a negative correlation with temperature. In addition, the runoff variation is more sensitive to change in precipitation than the change in temperature at all the five time scales. (4) Although the runoff and the climate change factors have non-linear trends at different time scales, the runoff has linear correlation with the temperature and the precipitation, especially at a large time scale.

Dates

  • Submission Date2014-03-14
  • Revision Date2014-04-08
  • Acceptance Date2014-07-12
  • Online Date2015-01-04

DOI Reference

10.2298/TSCI1405511D

References

  1. Bosnjakovic, B., Geopolitics of Climate Change: a Review, Thermal Science, 16 (2012), 3, pp. 629-654
  2. Guo, Y. N., et al., Air Temperature and Precipitation Variation Trends of the Lancang River Upstream from 1957 to 2011, Thermal Science, 17 (2013), 5, pp. 1383-1388
  3. Islam, A., et al., Streamflow Response to Climate Change in the Brahmani River Basin, India, Water Resources Management, 26 (2012), 6, pp. 1409-1424
  4. Chen, Y. N., et al., Regional Climate Change and Its Effects on River Runoff in the Tarim Basin, China, Hydrological Processes, 20 (2006), 10, pp. 2207-2216
  5. Yang, X. H., et al., An Ideal Interval Method of Multi-Objective Decision-Making for Comprehensive Assessment of Water Resource Renewability, Science in China, Series E, 47 (2004), I, pp. 42-50
  6. Fu, G. B., et al., Impacts of Climate Variability on Stream-Flow in the Yellow River, Hydrological Processes, 21 (2007), 25, pp. 3431-3439
  7. Sankarasubramanian, A., et al., Climate Elasticity of Streamflow in the United States, Water Resources Research, 37 (2001), 6, pp. 1771-1781
  8. Xu, J. H., et al., The Non-linear Trend of Runoff and its Response to Climate Change in the Aksu River, Western China, International Journal of Climatology, 31 (2011), 5, pp. 687-695
  9. Liu, C. M., Zheng, H. X., Changes in Components of the Hydrological Cycle in the Yellow River Basin During the Second Half of the 20th Century, Hydrological Processes, 18 (2004), 12, pp. 2337-2345
  10. Labat, D., et al., Recent Advances in Wavelet Analyses: Part 2-Amazon, Parana, Orinoco and Congo Discharges Time Scale Variability, Journal of Hydrology, 314 (2005), 1-4, pp. 289-311
Volume 18, Issue 5, Pages1511 -1516