Summer Season Water Temperature Modeling under the Climate Change: Case Study for Fourchue River, Quebec, Canada

Abstract

Abstract:It is accepted that human-induced climate change is unavoidable and it will have effects on physical, chemical, and biological properties of aquatic habitats. This will be especially important for cold water fishes such as trout. The objective of this study is to simulate water temperature for future periods under the climate change situations. Future water temperature in the Fourchue River (St-Alexandre-de-Kamouraska, QC, Canada) were simulated by the CEQUEAU hydrological and water temperature model, using meteorological inputs from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) Global Circulation Models (GCMs) with Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5 climate change scenarios. The result of the study indicated that water temperature in June will increase 0.2-0.7 • C and that in September, median water temperature could decrease by 0.2-1.1 • C. The rise in summer water temperature may be favorable to brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) growth, but several days over the Upper Incipient Lethal Temperature (UILT) are also likely to occur. Therefore, flow regulation procedures, including cold water releases from the Morin dam may have to be considered for the Fourchue River.

Impact of Future Climate Change on Water Temperature and Thermal Habitat for Keystone Fishes in the Lower Saint John River, Canada

“…Although Kwak et al (2017) reported a relatively small increase in median June temperature (0.2 -0.7 °C increase in mean June temperature by 2096), the results of our study are broadly consistent with the findings of Daigle et al (2015;0.7-2.7 °C increase in seven-day maximum temperature by 2065), thus adding credence to our projected increase in annual maximum and summer minimum river temperature towards 2100. However, both Kwak et al (2017) and Daigle et al (2015) were conducted in substantially smaller watersheds than the SJR, so limited inferences can be drawn as to their comparability.…”

“…Physiographic data necessary to run CEQUEAU's hydrological model component were assembled from a range of GIS databases. Elevations were derived from a 1 arc-second (~25 m) SRTM digital elevation model (Farr et al, 2007), while raster land use data used to compute forest and bare soil cover were obtained from the North American Land-Change Monitoring System (Latifovic et al, 2012). Percentage cover of waterbodies and wetlands were obtained from vector shapefiles downloaded from the Government of New Brunswick's GeoNB geospatial data portal (http://www.snb.ca/geonb1/e/index-E.asp).…”

Multivariate Hybrid Modelling of Future Wave-Storms at the Northwestern Black Sea

“…Two climate change scenarios were considered in this study: RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios. A general circulation model (GCM), with a basis in climate-assessment studies [32][33][34], provides the general circulation of the Earth's atmosphere. Although the spatial coverage is global, the grid size is too coarse for modelling wave forcings (i.e.…”

Ecological Responses of Lakes to Climate Change

“…In addition to long-term synoptic assessment, an approach that is likely to become important to projecting the future of lake thermal properties in a warming world, is coupled modeling. In this special issue, Kwak et al [13] used a model that can simulate hydrological and thermal responses of water bodies to warming, and coupled it with output from the Coupled Model Inter-Comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) Global Circulation Models (GCMs). They evaluated the projected effects of three future climate scenarios on the Fourchue River, Quebec, Canada.…”