Using Integrated Hydrological Models to Assess the Impacts of Climate Change on Discharges and Extreme Flood Events in the Upper Yangtze River Basin

Wu, Yanjuan; Luo, Gang; Chen, Cai; Duan, Zheng; Gao, Chao

doi:10.3390/w13030299

Submit to this Journal Review for this Journal Edit a Special Issue

Article Menu

...

Open AccessArticle

Using Integrated Hydrological Models to Assess the Impacts of Climate Change on Discharges and Extreme Flood Events in the Upper Yangtze River Basin

^1,2,3

⁴

⁴,

⁵ and

^1,2,3,*

Department of Geography and Spatial Information Techniques, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China

Ningbo Universities Collaborative Innovation Center for Land and Marine Spatial Utilization and Governance Research, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China

Institute of East China Sea, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China

⁴

Ningbo Research Center for Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo 315800, China

⁵

Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University, S-22362 Lund, Sweden

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Academic Editors: Naicheng Wu, Qinghua Cai and Wei Ouyang

Water 2021, 13(3), 299; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13030299

Received: 2 January 2021 / Revised: 19 January 2021 / Accepted: 19 January 2021 / Published: 26 January 2021

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrated Ecohydrological Models and Aquatic Ecosystem Management)

View Full-Text Download PDF

Browse Figures

Review Reports Citation Export

Abstract

Amongst the impacts of climate change, those arising from extreme hydrological events are expected to cause the greatest impacts. To assess the changes in temperature and precipitation and their impacts on the discharge in the upper Yangtze Basin from pre-industrial to the end of 21st century, four hydrological models were integrated with four global climate models. Results indicated that mean discharge was simulated to increase slightly for all hydrological models forced by all global climate models during 1771–1800 and 1871–1900 relative to the 1971–2000 reference period, whereas the change directions in mean discharge were not consistent among the four global climate models during 2070–2099, with increases from HadGEM2-ES and MIROC5, and decreases from GFDL-ESM2M and IPSL-CM5A-LR. Additionally, our results indicated that decreases in precipitation may always result in the decrease in mean discharge, but increases in precipitation did not always lead to increases in discharge due to high temperature rise. The changes in extreme flood events with different return intervals were also explored. These extreme events were projected to become more intense and frequent in the future, which could have potential devastating impacts on the society and ecosystem in this region. View Full-Text

Keywords: climate change; hydrologic modeling; global climate models; mean discharge; extreme floods event

▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Supplementary Material

Supplementary File 1:
PDF-Document (PDF, 319 KiB)

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Wu, Y.; Luo, G.; Chen, C.; Duan, Z.; Gao, C. Using Integrated Hydrological Models to Assess the Impacts of Climate Change on Discharges and Extreme Flood Events in the Upper Yangtze River Basin. Water 2021, 13, 299. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13030299

AMA Style

Wu Y, Luo G, Chen C, Duan Z, Gao C. Using Integrated Hydrological Models to Assess the Impacts of Climate Change on Discharges and Extreme Flood Events in the Upper Yangtze River Basin. Water. 2021; 13(3):299. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13030299

Chicago/Turabian Style

Wu, Yanjuan, Gang Luo, Cai Chen, Zheng Duan, and Chao Gao. 2021. "Using Integrated Hydrological Models to Assess the Impacts of Climate Change on Discharges and Extreme Flood Events in the Upper Yangtze River Basin" Water 13, no. 3: 299. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13030299

Find Other Styles

Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

Article Metrics

Abstract views Pdf views Html views

Article Menu

Using Integrated Hydrological Models to Assess the Impacts of Climate Change on Discharges and Extreme Flood Events in the Upper Yangtze River Basin

Abstract

Supplementary Material

Share and Cite

Article Metrics

Article Access Statistics

Article Access Map by Country/Region

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI