Sources of uncertainty in hydrological climate impact assessment: a cross-scale study
Climate change impacts on water availability and hydrological extremes are major concerns as regards the Sustainable Development Goals. Impacts on hydrology are normally investigated as part of a modelling chain, in which climate projections from multiple climate models are used as inputs to multipl...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IOP Publishing
2018-01-01
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| Series: | Environmental Research Letters |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa9938 |
| _version_ | 1797748166914736128 |
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| author | F F Hattermann T Vetter L Breuer Buda Su P Daggupati C Donnelly B Fekete F Flörke S N Gosling P Hoffmann S Liersch Y Masaki Y Motovilov C Müller L Samaniego T Stacke Y Wada T Yang V Krysnaova |
| author_facet | F F Hattermann T Vetter L Breuer Buda Su P Daggupati C Donnelly B Fekete F Flörke S N Gosling P Hoffmann S Liersch Y Masaki Y Motovilov C Müller L Samaniego T Stacke Y Wada T Yang V Krysnaova |
| author_sort | F F Hattermann |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Climate change impacts on water availability and hydrological extremes are major concerns as regards the Sustainable Development Goals. Impacts on hydrology are normally investigated as part of a modelling chain, in which climate projections from multiple climate models are used as inputs to multiple impact models, under different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, which result in different amounts of global temperature rise. While the goal is generally to investigate the relevance of changes in climate for the water cycle, water resources or hydrological extremes, it is often the case that variations in other components of the model chain obscure the effect of climate scenario variation. This is particularly important when assessing the impacts of relatively lower magnitudes of global warming, such as those associated with the aspirational goals of the Paris Agreement. In our study, we use ANOVA (analyses of variance) to allocate and quantify the main sources of uncertainty in the hydrological impact modelling chain. In turn we determine the statistical significance of different sources of uncertainty. We achieve this by using a set of five climate models and up to 13 hydrological models, for nine large scale river basins across the globe, under four emissions scenarios. The impact variable we consider in our analysis is daily river discharge. We analyze overall water availability and flow regime, including seasonality, high flows and low flows. Scaling effects are investigated by separately looking at discharge generated by global and regional hydrological models respectively. Finally, we compare our results with other recently published studies. We find that small differences in global temperature rise associated with some emissions scenarios have mostly significant impacts on river discharge—however, climate model related uncertainty is so large that it obscures the sensitivity of the hydrological system. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:01:02Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-d8b77f3e6f5944649408f45c0627eeb3 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1748-9326 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:01:02Z |
| publishDate | 2018-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Environmental Research Letters |
| spelling | doaj.art-d8b77f3e6f5944649408f45c0627eeb32023-08-09T14:39:16ZengIOP PublishingEnvironmental Research Letters1748-93262018-01-0113101500610.1088/1748-9326/aa9938Sources of uncertainty in hydrological climate impact assessment: a cross-scale studyF F Hattermann0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6046-4670T Vetter1L Breuer2Buda Su3P Daggupati4C Donnelly5B Fekete6F Flörke7S N Gosling8https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5973-6862P Hoffmann9S Liersch10Y Masaki11Y Motovilov12C Müller13https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9491-3550L Samaniego14https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8449-4428T Stacke15Y Wada16T Yang17V Krysnaova18Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research , Potsdam, Germany; Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research , Potsdam, Germany; German Research Centre for Geosciences , Potsdam, GermanyJustus Liebig University Giessen, GermanyNational Climate Centre, China Meteorological Administration , Beijing, People’s Republic of ChinaUniversity of Guelph , Guelph, Ontario, CanadaSwedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute , Norrköping, SwedenCity College of New York , CUNY, New York, NY, United States of AmericaCenter for Environmental Systems Research, University of Kassel , Kassel, GermanySchool of Geography, University of Nottingham , Nottingham, United KingdomPotsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research , Potsdam, GermanyPotsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research , Potsdam, GermanyNational Institute for Environmental Studies , Tsukuba, Japan; Hirosaki University , Hirosaki, JapanWater Problems Institute of Russian Academy of Science , Moscow, RussiaPotsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research , Potsdam, GermanyUFZ-Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research , Leipzig, GermanyMax Planck Institute for Meteorology , Hamburg, GermanyInternational Institute for Applied Systems Analysis , Laxenburg, Austria; Utrecht University , Utrecht, The NetherlandsHohai University , Nanjing, People’s Republic of China; Chinese Academy of Sciences , Urumqi, People’s Republic of ChinaPotsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research , Potsdam, GermanyClimate change impacts on water availability and hydrological extremes are major concerns as regards the Sustainable Development Goals. Impacts on hydrology are normally investigated as part of a modelling chain, in which climate projections from multiple climate models are used as inputs to multiple impact models, under different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, which result in different amounts of global temperature rise. While the goal is generally to investigate the relevance of changes in climate for the water cycle, water resources or hydrological extremes, it is often the case that variations in other components of the model chain obscure the effect of climate scenario variation. This is particularly important when assessing the impacts of relatively lower magnitudes of global warming, such as those associated with the aspirational goals of the Paris Agreement. In our study, we use ANOVA (analyses of variance) to allocate and quantify the main sources of uncertainty in the hydrological impact modelling chain. In turn we determine the statistical significance of different sources of uncertainty. We achieve this by using a set of five climate models and up to 13 hydrological models, for nine large scale river basins across the globe, under four emissions scenarios. The impact variable we consider in our analysis is daily river discharge. We analyze overall water availability and flow regime, including seasonality, high flows and low flows. Scaling effects are investigated by separately looking at discharge generated by global and regional hydrological models respectively. Finally, we compare our results with other recently published studies. We find that small differences in global temperature rise associated with some emissions scenarios have mostly significant impacts on river discharge—however, climate model related uncertainty is so large that it obscures the sensitivity of the hydrological system.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa9938climate change uncertaintymulti-model assessmenthydrologywater resourcesANOVAParis climate agreement |
| spellingShingle | F F Hattermann T Vetter L Breuer Buda Su P Daggupati C Donnelly B Fekete F Flörke S N Gosling P Hoffmann S Liersch Y Masaki Y Motovilov C Müller L Samaniego T Stacke Y Wada T Yang V Krysnaova Sources of uncertainty in hydrological climate impact assessment: a cross-scale study Environmental Research Letters climate change uncertainty multi-model assessment hydrology water resources ANOVA Paris climate agreement |
| title | Sources of uncertainty in hydrological climate impact assessment: a cross-scale study |
| title_full | Sources of uncertainty in hydrological climate impact assessment: a cross-scale study |
| title_fullStr | Sources of uncertainty in hydrological climate impact assessment: a cross-scale study |
| title_full_unstemmed | Sources of uncertainty in hydrological climate impact assessment: a cross-scale study |
| title_short | Sources of uncertainty in hydrological climate impact assessment: a cross-scale study |
| title_sort | sources of uncertainty in hydrological climate impact assessment a cross scale study |
| topic | climate change uncertainty multi-model assessment hydrology water resources ANOVA Paris climate agreement |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa9938 |
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