Contribution of environmental forcings to US runoff changes for the period 1950–2010
Runoff in the United States is changing, and this study finds that the measured change is dependent on the geographic region and varies seasonally. Specifically, observed annual total runoff had an insignificant increasing trend in the US between 1950 and 2010, but this insignificance was due to reg...
| 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/aabb41 |
| _version_ | 1797748307981762560 |
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| author | Whitney L Forbes Jiafu Mao Mingzhou Jin Shih-Chieh Kao Wenting Fu Xiaoying Shi Daniel M Riccuito Peter E Thornton Aurélien Ribes Yutao Wang Shilong Piao Tianbao Zhao Christopher R Schwalm Forrest M Hoffman Joshua B Fisher Akihiko Ito Ben Poulter Yuanyuan Fang Hanqin Tian Atul K Jain Daniel J Hayes |
| author_facet | Whitney L Forbes Jiafu Mao Mingzhou Jin Shih-Chieh Kao Wenting Fu Xiaoying Shi Daniel M Riccuito Peter E Thornton Aurélien Ribes Yutao Wang Shilong Piao Tianbao Zhao Christopher R Schwalm Forrest M Hoffman Joshua B Fisher Akihiko Ito Ben Poulter Yuanyuan Fang Hanqin Tian Atul K Jain Daniel J Hayes |
| author_sort | Whitney L Forbes |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Runoff in the United States is changing, and this study finds that the measured change is dependent on the geographic region and varies seasonally. Specifically, observed annual total runoff had an insignificant increasing trend in the US between 1950 and 2010, but this insignificance was due to regional heterogeneity with both significant and insignificant increases in the eastern, northern, and southern US, and a greater significant decrease in the western US. Trends for seasonal mean runoff also differed across regions. By region, the season with the largest observed trend was autumn for the east (positive), spring for the north (positive), winter for the south (positive), winter for the west (negative), and autumn for the US as a whole (positive). Based on the detection and attribution analysis using gridded WaterWatch runoff observations along with semi-factorial land surface model simulations from the Multi-scale Synthesis and Terrestrial Model Intercomparison Project (MsTMIP), we found that while the roles of CO _2 concentration, nitrogen deposition, and land use and land cover were inconsistent regionally and seasonally, the effect of climatic variations was detected for all regions and seasons, and the change in runoff could be attributed to climate change in summer and autumn in the south and in autumn in the west. We also found that the climate-only and historical transient simulations consistently underestimated the runoff trends, possibly due to precipitation bias in the MsTMIP driver or within the models themselves. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:03:02Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-da5fc42fbae94c948ca74c7d779b6303 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1748-9326 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T16:03:02Z |
| publishDate | 2018-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Environmental Research Letters |
| spelling | doaj.art-da5fc42fbae94c948ca74c7d779b63032023-08-09T14:33:07ZengIOP PublishingEnvironmental Research Letters1748-93262018-01-0113505402310.1088/1748-9326/aabb41Contribution of environmental forcings to US runoff changes for the period 1950–2010Whitney L Forbes0Jiafu Mao1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2050-7373Mingzhou Jin2Shih-Chieh Kao3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3207-5328Wenting Fu4Xiaoying Shi5Daniel M Riccuito6Peter E Thornton7Aurélien Ribes8Yutao Wang9Shilong Piao10Tianbao Zhao11Christopher R Schwalm12Forrest M Hoffman13Joshua B Fisher14https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4734-9085Akihiko Ito15https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5265-0791Ben Poulter16Yuanyuan Fang17Hanqin Tian18Atul K Jain19Daniel J Hayes20Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering , University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, United States of America; Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute , Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, United States of AmericaEnvironmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute , Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, United States of America; These authors contributed equally to this work.Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering , University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, United States of AmericaEnvironmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute , Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, United States of AmericaJackson School of Geosciences , the University of Texas, Austin, TX, United States of AmericaEnvironmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute , Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, United States of AmericaEnvironmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute , Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, United States of AmericaEnvironmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute , Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, United States of AmericaCentre National de Recherches Météorologiques , Météo-France/CNRS, 42 Avenue Gaspard Coriolis, Toulouse 31057, FranceFudan Tyndall Center , Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai 200438, People’s Republic of ChinaSino-French Institute for Earth System Science , College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China; Key Laboratory of Alpine Ecology and Biodiversity , Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, People’s Republic of China; CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Science , Beijing 100085, People’s Republic of ChinaKey Laboratory of Regional Climate-Environment Research for East Asia , Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, People’s Republic of ChinaWoods Hole Research Center , Falmouth, MA 02540, United States of America; Center for Ecosystem Science and Society , Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, United States of AmericaComputer Science and Mathematics Division and Climate Change Science Institute , Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, United States of AmericaJet Propulsion Laboratory , California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, United States of AmericaCenter for Global Environmental Research , National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Onogawa 16-2, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305–8506, JapanNASA Goddard Space Flight Center , Biospheric Sciences Lab., Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States of AmericaDepartment of Global Ecology , Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA, United States of AmericaInternational Center for Climate and Global Change Research and School of Forestry and Wildlife Science , Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of AmericaDepartment of Atmospheric Sciences , University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, United States of AmericaSchool of Forest Resources , University of Maine, Orono, ME 04459, United States of AmericaRunoff in the United States is changing, and this study finds that the measured change is dependent on the geographic region and varies seasonally. Specifically, observed annual total runoff had an insignificant increasing trend in the US between 1950 and 2010, but this insignificance was due to regional heterogeneity with both significant and insignificant increases in the eastern, northern, and southern US, and a greater significant decrease in the western US. Trends for seasonal mean runoff also differed across regions. By region, the season with the largest observed trend was autumn for the east (positive), spring for the north (positive), winter for the south (positive), winter for the west (negative), and autumn for the US as a whole (positive). Based on the detection and attribution analysis using gridded WaterWatch runoff observations along with semi-factorial land surface model simulations from the Multi-scale Synthesis and Terrestrial Model Intercomparison Project (MsTMIP), we found that while the roles of CO _2 concentration, nitrogen deposition, and land use and land cover were inconsistent regionally and seasonally, the effect of climatic variations was detected for all regions and seasons, and the change in runoff could be attributed to climate change in summer and autumn in the south and in autumn in the west. We also found that the climate-only and historical transient simulations consistently underestimated the runoff trends, possibly due to precipitation bias in the MsTMIP driver or within the models themselves.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aabb41US runoffdetection and attributionMsTMIP |
| spellingShingle | Whitney L Forbes Jiafu Mao Mingzhou Jin Shih-Chieh Kao Wenting Fu Xiaoying Shi Daniel M Riccuito Peter E Thornton Aurélien Ribes Yutao Wang Shilong Piao Tianbao Zhao Christopher R Schwalm Forrest M Hoffman Joshua B Fisher Akihiko Ito Ben Poulter Yuanyuan Fang Hanqin Tian Atul K Jain Daniel J Hayes Contribution of environmental forcings to US runoff changes for the period 1950–2010 Environmental Research Letters US runoff detection and attribution MsTMIP |
| title | Contribution of environmental forcings to US runoff changes for the period 1950–2010 |
| title_full | Contribution of environmental forcings to US runoff changes for the period 1950–2010 |
| title_fullStr | Contribution of environmental forcings to US runoff changes for the period 1950–2010 |
| title_full_unstemmed | Contribution of environmental forcings to US runoff changes for the period 1950–2010 |
| title_short | Contribution of environmental forcings to US runoff changes for the period 1950–2010 |
| title_sort | contribution of environmental forcings to us runoff changes for the period 1950 2010 |
| topic | US runoff detection and attribution MsTMIP |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aabb41 |
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