Elevation‐dependent responses of streamflow to climate warming

Tennant, Christopher J.; Crosby, B. T.; Godsey, Sarah E.

doi:10.1002/hyp.10203

Cited by 35 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 59 publications

(85 reference statements)

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“…The lags between the 25th percentiles of rainfall and streamflow provide insight into how quickly the rainfall is converted into streamflow. The catchments dominated by high rainfall events (such as the Aghanashini) exhibit seasonal variation in base flow and changes in the timing of rainfall transformation into streamflow over the catchments that have an influence on the water quality and the rate of chemical weathering (Tennant et al ., ). Therefore, it was deemed essential to analyse the variation of the rainfall to streamflow channel routing in the different elevation zones.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Regional climate trends and topographic influence over the Western Ghat catchments of India

Mudbhatkal

Mahesha

2017

Intl Journal of Climatology

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This study investigates the role of elevation stratification and climate change on the hydrology of Western Ghat catchments during the period from 1951 to 2013 using gridded data. The trend analysis of rainfall and temperature was conducted using the Mann–Kendall trend test, and the hydrological modelling of the rivers was conducted using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. To characterize the spatial distribution of rainfall and streamflow based on elevation stratification, contemporary rainfall zones were delineated and the response of each zone was evaluated. The results indicated that the maximum rainfall occurs at certain distance on the windward side from the crest of the Western Ghats. On the leeward side (eastern plateau), the rainfall is maximum at crest (Western Ghats) and decreases with distance. The rivers in the southern portion of the Western Ghats of India were highly vulnerable to changing climate followed by the central portion. The annual and monsoon rainfall in the southern river decreased at 0.43 and 0.30 decade−1 (1 significance level), respectively. The summer rainfall in the river of the central portion (Netravathi River) decreased at 0.44 decade−1. The annual air temperature of the southern river catchment (Vamanapuram) increased at the rate of 0.12 °C decade−1 (at 0.1 significance level), and the air temperature of the central rivers increased at the rate of 0.09, 0.08, and 0.07 °C (0.1 significance level), respectively. The streamflow response of the southern and central rivers was discernible as the monsoon flow decreased at 37 decade−1 (0.1 significance level) in the southern river and 10 decade−1 (5 significance level) in the central river. Interestingly, the pristine Aghanashini River demonstrated resilience to climate change with an increase in annual rainfall and streamflow at 115 mm decade−1 (5 significance level) and 0.71 Mm3 decade−1 (0.1 significance level), respectively

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The intensity of heavy rainfall events (>100 mm) and the number of rainy days in Zones 1 and 2 are more than in Zone 3. Similar lag times were observed in four rain‐dominated catchments of the United States (Tennant et al ., ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional climate trends and topographic influence over the Western Ghat catchments of India

Mudbhatkal

Mahesha

2017

Intl Journal of Climatology

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“…This result differs from Tennant et al . () who, on a larger scale, found an elevation dependency of climate warming impacts in snow‐dominated mountain basins.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hydrological resilience of a Canadian Rockies headwaters basin subject to changing climate, extreme weather, and forest management

Harder

Pomeroy

Westbrook

2015

Hydrological Processes

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Abstract:Marmot Creek Research Basin in the Canadian Rockies has been the site of intensive streamflow, groundwater, snow accumulation, precipitation, and air temperature observations at multiple elevations. The basin was instrumented in 1962, subjected to forestry experiments in the mid-1970s, and experienced extreme flooding in 2013. Climate change, forest cover change, and recent extreme weather make the basin an ideal laboratory for studying hydrological resilience. Observations show increases in low elevation air temperature, multiple day and spring precipitation, interannual variability of precipitation, and high elevation groundwater levels. Observations also show decreases in peak seasonal snow accumulation and low elevation groundwater levels. Despite these substantial hydrometeorological and groundwater changes, streamflow volume, timing of peak, and magnitude of the peak are not changing. Streamflow volumes are also insensitive to forest cover changes and teleconnections. The June 2013 flood was unprecedented in the period of record, and the basin significantly moderated the hydrological response to the extreme precipitation; the 2013 storm precipitation depth was 65% greater than the next highest storm total over 51 years; however, the 2013 peak streamflow was only 32% greater than the next highest peak flow recorded. The hydrology of Marmot Creek Research Basin displays remarkable resilience to changing climate, extreme weather, and forest cover change.

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“…air temperature, runoff generation, soil temperature and soil moisture (Bernhardt et al, 2012;Deb et al, 2015;Dutra et al, 2012;Dyurgerov, 2003;Liston, 2004;Mankin and Diffenbaugh, 2015;Santini and di Paola, 2015;Tennant et al, 2015). Hence, accurate estimation of the spatial extent of the snow pack is fundamental for a suite of applications .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the need for a time- and location-dependent estimation of the NDSI threshold value for reducing existing uncertainties in snow cover maps at different scales

et al. 2018

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Abstract. Knowledge of current snow cover extent is essential for characterizing energy and moisture fluxes at the Earth's surface. The snow-covered area (SCA) is often estimated by using optical satellite information in combination with the normalized-difference snow index (NDSI). The NDSI thereby uses a threshold for the definition if a satellite pixel is assumed to be snow covered or snow free. The spatiotemporal representativeness of the standard threshold of 0.4 is however questionable at the local scale. Here, we use local snow cover maps derived from ground-based photography to continuously calibrate the NDSI threshold values (NDSI thr ) of Landsat satellite images at two European mountain sites of the period from 2010 to 2015. The Research Catchment Zugspitzplatt (RCZ, Germany) and Vernagtferner area (VF, Austria) are both located within a single Landsat scene. Nevertheless, the long-term analysis of the NDSI thr demonstrated that the NDSI thr at these sites are not correlated (r = 0.17) and different than the standard threshold of 0.4. For further comparison, a dynamic and locally optimized NDSI threshold was used as well as another locally optimized literature threshold value (0.7). It was shown that large uncertainties in the prediction of the SCA of up to 24.1 % exist in satellite snow cover maps in cases where the standard threshold of 0.4 is used, but a newly developed calibrated quadratic polynomial model which accounts for seasonal threshold dynamics can reduce this error. The model minimizes the SCA uncertainties at the calibration site VF by 50 % in the evaluation period and was also able to improve the results at RCZ in a significant way. Additionally, a scaling experiment shows that the positive effect of a locally adapted threshold diminishes using a pixel size of 500 m or larger, underlining the general applicability of the standard threshold at larger scales.

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Elevation‐dependent responses of streamflow to climate warming

Cited by 35 publications

References 59 publications

Regional climate trends and topographic influence over the Western Ghat catchments of India

Regional climate trends and topographic influence over the Western Ghat catchments of India

Hydrological resilience of a Canadian Rockies headwaters basin subject to changing climate, extreme weather, and forest management

On the need for a time- and location-dependent estimation of the NDSI threshold value for reducing existing uncertainties in snow cover maps at different scales

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