Variation of Runoff and Runoff Components of the Upper Shule River in the Northeastern Qinghai–Tibet Plateau under Climate Change

Abstract

Quantifying the impact of climate change on hydrologic features is essential for the scientific planning, management and sustainable use of water resources in Northwest China. Based on hydrometeorological data and glacier inventory data, the Spatial Processes in Hydrology (SPHY) model was used to simulate the changes of hydrologic processes in the Upper Shule River (USR) from 1971 to 2020, and variations of runoff and runoff components were quantitatively analyzed using the simulations and observations. The results showed that the glacier area has decreased by 21.8% with a reduction rate of 2.06 km2/a. Significant increasing trends in rainfall runoff, glacier runoff (GR) and baseflow indicate there has been a consistent increase in total runoff due to increasing rainfall and glacier melting. The baseflow has made the largest contribution to total runoff, followed by GR, rainfall runoff and snow runoff, with mean annual contributions of 38%, 28%, 18% and 16%, respectively. The annual contribution of glacier and snow runoff to the total runoff shows a decreasing trend with decreasing glacier area and increasing temperature. Any increase of total runoff in the future will depend on an increase of rainfall, which will exacerbate the impact of drought and flood disasters.

Reconstructing runoff components and glacier mass balance with climate change: Niyang river basin, southeastern Tibetan plateau

“…During 1969-1983and 1984-1998, increasing precipitation (Figure 2) also led to an increase in snowmelt runoff (Figure 6D). Baseflow, which is mainly produced by groundwater recharged from precipitation and a fraction of glacier melt (Wu et al, 2021), is strongly correlated with precipitation (Figure 2). The baseflow showed a slightly increasing trend (0.003 km 3 /a, Figure 6E) during 1969-2013.…”

“…In addition, due to climate warming, the recharge and regulation effects of meltwater (glacier/snow) on runoff are continuously weakened, and the influence of rainfall on runoff is gradually strengthened in the NRB. Since regional rainfall is characterized by significant fluctuations, uncertainty about future Frontiers in Earth Science frontiersin.org 13 runoff changes is increasing and there is an increased risk of disasters such as floods and droughts caused by rainfall changes (Wu et al, 2021).…”

“…Measured meteorological data are lacking in many parts of the study area, especially in high-altitude areas. In addition, the interpolation method is based on the altitude gradient of temperature and precipitation, which inevitably leads to uncertainty of model outcome (Wu et al, 2021). The SPHY model simulates the absolute amount of glacier melt, which is sensitive to the initial glacier area and volume (Khanal et al, 2021).…”

Characteristics and Attribution of Spatiotemporal Changes in Qilian Mountains' Runoff Over the Past Six Decades

“…An obvious difference was observed between the eastern and western regions. Conversely, a downward trend was observed in the eastern QM region, ranging from −0.93 × 10 8 to −0.05 × 10 8 m 3 /10a in SY, HS, DT, and ZL (Chang et al., 2018; Jia & Deng, 2010; Y. Li et al., 2017; X. Li et al., 2020; Wei et al., 2021; Wu et al., 2021). The runoff trends in SY and HS were significant ( p < 0.05), for which the mutation test revealed the abrupt changes in the 1970s and 1960s, respectively (J. Wang and Hu, 2011; Xue et al., 2021).…”

Spatiotemporal variations in runoff and runoff components in response to climate change in a glacierized subbasin of the Upper Indus Basin, Pakistan

“…However, the quantification of runoff components has always been a problematic issue in hydrological studies and different methods have been used for this purpose such as the stable water isotope modeling approach (Boral and Sen, 2020), statistical and empirical approaches (Mukhopadhyay and Khan, 2014;2015a) and hydrological modeling (Lutz et al, 2014(Lutz et al, , 2016Adnan et al, 2017;Ali et al, 2018;Latif et al, 2020;Khanal et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2022). However, among these, hydrological modeling has an advantage in runoff segmentation because of its modular approach to hydrological processes (Wu et al, 2021).…”