Impacts of recent drought and warm years on water resources and electricity supply worldwide

Vliet, Michelle T. H. van; Sheffield, Justin; Wiberg, D.; Wood, Eric F.

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/12/124021

Cited by 112 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…For both human‐influenced processes, we also need to make assumptions on the likely operating rules and local regulations. This will make it more difficult to include these additions in DynWat, but even a simple global implementation could already show great potential as demonstrated by van Vliet, Wiberg, et al () van Vliet, Sheffield, et al ().…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High‐Resolution Global Water Temperature Modeling

Wanders

Vliet

Wada

et al. 2019

Water Resources Research

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The temperature of river water plays a crucial role in many physical, chemical, and aquatic ecological processes. Despite the importance of having detailed information on this environmental variable at locally relevant scales (≤50 km), high‐resolution simulations of water temperature on a large scale are currently lacking. We have developed the dynamical 1‐D water energy routing model (DynWat), that solves both the energy and water balance, to simulate river temperatures for the period 1960–2014 at a nominal 10‐km and 50‐km resolution. The DynWat model accounts for surface water abstraction, reservoirs, riverine flooding, and formation of ice, enabling a realistic representation of the water temperature. We present a novel 10‐km water temperature data set at the global scale for all major rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. Validated results against 358 stations worldwide indicate a decrease in the simulated root‐mean‐square error (0.2 °C) and bias (0.7 °C), going from 50‐ to 10‐km simulations. We find an average global increase in water temperature of 0.16 °C per decade between 1960 and 2014, with more rapid warming toward 2014. Results show increasing trends for the annual daily maxima in the Northern Hemisphere (0.62 °C per decade) and the annual daily minima in the Southern Hemisphere (0.45 °C per decade) for 1960–2014. The high‐resolution modeling framework not only improves the model performance, it also positively impacts the relevance of the simulations for regional‐scale studies and impact assessments in a region without observations. The resulting global water temperature data set could help to improve the accuracy of decision‐support systems that depend on water temperature estimates.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High‐Resolution Global Water Temperature Modeling

Wanders

Vliet

Wada

et al. 2019

Water Resources Research

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“…Hydrological droughts affect the environment and cause damage to society and the economy. van Vliet et al (2016) showed reduced potential for thermoelectric power and hydropower generation under hydrological drought worldwide. In Europe, the 2003 drought and heat wave resulted in a change of nearly −6.6 % in hydropower power generation and −4.7 % in thermoelectric.…”

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confidence: 99%

Climate change alters low flows in Europe under global warming of 1.5, 2, and 3 °C

Marx

Kumar

Thober

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. There is growing evidence that climate change will alter water availability in Europe. Here, we investigate how hydrological low flows are affected under different levels of future global warming (i.e. 1.5, 2, and 3 K with respect to the pre-industrial period) in rivers with a contributing area of more than 1000 km 2 . The analysis is based on a multi-model ensemble of 45 hydrological simulations based on three representative concentration pathways (RCP2.6, RCP6.0, RCP8.5), five Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) general circulation models (GCMs: GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES, IPSL-CM5A-LR, MIROC-ESM-CHEM, NorESM1-M) and three state-of-theart hydrological models (HMs: mHM, Noah-MP, and PCR-GLOBWB). High-resolution model results are available at a spatial resolution of 5 km across the pan-European domain at a daily temporal resolution. Low river flow is described as the percentile of daily streamflow that is exceeded 90 % of the time. It is determined separately for each GCM/HM combination and warming scenario. The results show that the low-flow change signal amplifies with increasing warming levels. Low flows decrease in the Mediterranean region, while they increase in the Alpine and Northern regions. In the Mediterranean, the level of warming amplifies the signal from −12 % under 1.5 K, compared to the baseline period 1971-2000, to −35 % under global warming of 3 K, largely due to the projected decreases in annual precipitation. In contrast, the signal is amplified from +22 (1.5 K) to +45 % (3 K) in the Alpine region due to changes in snow accumulation. The changes in low flows are significant for regions with relatively large change signals and under higher levels of warming. However, it is not possible to distinguish climate-induced differences in low flows between 1.5 and 2 K warming because of (1) the large inter-annual variability which prevents distinguishing statistical estimates of periodaveraged changes for a given GCM/HM combination, and (2) the uncertainty in the multi-model ensemble expressed by the signal-to-noise ratio. The contribution by the GCMs to the uncertainty in the model results is generally higher than the one by the HMs. However, the uncertainty due to HMs cannot be neglected. In the Alpine, Northern, and Mediterranean regions, the uncertainty contribution by the HMs is partly higher than those by the GCMs due to different representations of processes such as snow, soil moisture and evapotranspiration. Based on the analysis results, it is recommended (1) to use multiple HMs in climate impact studies and (2) to embrace uncertainty information on the multimodel ensemble as well as its single members in the adaptation process.

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“…Vaughan et al, 2013), there is wide consensus that glacier change needs to be accounted for in hydrological modelling. However, we have shown in this study that modelling with a constant glacier area can be interesting to analyse seasonal drought processes in the future, without taking into account the long-term changes of the glacier area.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Glaciers play an essential role in the global water cycle as hydrologic reservoirs on various timescales (Jansson et al, 2003;Vaughan et al, 2013). They, for example, reduce the interannual variability by storing water in cold and wet years and releasing it in warm and dry years (Jansson et al, 2003;Koboltschnig et al, 2007;Zappa and Kan, 2007;Viviroli et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Kaser et al, 2010;Immerzeel et al, 2010;Huss, 2011;Finger et al, 2012). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports with high confidence that glaciers worldwide are shrinking and that current glacier extents are out of balance with the current climate, indicating that glaciers will continue to shrink (Vaughan et al, 2013). Retreating glaciers affect the discharge regimes in glacierised catchments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The role of glacier changes and threshold definition in the characterisation of future streamflow droughts in glacierised catchments

Tiel

Teuling

Wanders

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Glaciers are essential hydrological reservoirs, storing and releasing water at various timescales. Short-term variability in glacier melt is one of the causes of streamflow droughts, here defined as deficiencies from the flow regime. Streamflow droughts in glacierised catchments have a wide range of interlinked causing factors related to precipitation and temperature on short and long timescales. Climate change affects glacier storage capacity, with resulting consequences for discharge regimes and streamflow drought. Future projections of streamflow drought in glacierised basins can, however, strongly depend on the modelling strategies and analysis approaches applied. Here, we examine the effect of different approaches, concerning the glacier modelling and the drought threshold, on the characterisation of streamflow droughts in glacierised catchments. Streamflow is simulated with the Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalansavdelning (HBV-light) model for two case study catchments, the Nigardsbreen catchment in Norway and the Wolverine catchment in Alaska, and two future climate change scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). Two types of glacier modelling are applied, a constant and dynamic glacier area conceptualisation. Streamflow droughts are identified with the variable threshold level method and their characteristics are compared between two periods, a historical and future (2071-2100) period. Two existing threshold approaches to define future droughts are employed: (1) the threshold from the historical period; (2) a transient threshold approach, whereby the threshold adapts every year in the future to the changing regimes. Results show that drought characteristics differ among the combinations of glacier area modelling and thresholds. The historical threshold combined with a dynamic glacier area projects extreme increases in drought severity in the future, caused by the regime shift due to a reduction in glacier area. The historical threshold combined with a constant glacier area results in a drastic decrease of the number of droughts. The drought characteristics between future and historical periods are more similar when the transient threshold is used, for both glacier area conceptualisations. With the transient threshold, factors causing future droughts can be analysed. This study revealed the different effects of methodological choices on future streamflow drought projections and it highlights how the options can be used to analyse different aspects of future droughts: the transient threshold for analysing future drought processes, the historical threshold to assess changes between periods, the constant glacier area to analyse the effect of short-term climate variability on droughts and the dynamic glacier area to model more realistic future discharges under climate change.

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Impacts of recent drought and warm years on water resources and electricity supply worldwide

Cited by 112 publications

References 34 publications

High‐Resolution Global Water Temperature Modeling

High‐Resolution Global Water Temperature Modeling

Climate change alters low flows in Europe under global warming of 1.5, 2, and 3 °C

The role of glacier changes and threshold definition in the characterisation of future streamflow droughts in glacierised catchments

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Impacts of recent drought and warm years on water resources and electricity supply worldwide

Cited by 112 publications

References 34 publications

High‐Resolution Global Water Temperature Modeling

High‐Resolution Global Water Temperature Modeling

Climate change alters low flows in Europe under global warming of 1.5, 2, and 3 °C

The role of glacier changes and threshold definition in the characterisation of future streamflow droughts in glacierised catchments

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Product

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Climate change alters low flows in Europe under global warming of 1.5, 2, and 3 °C