On the Hydrologic Adjustment of Climate-Model Projections: The Potential Pitfall of Potential Evapotranspiration

Earth Interactions

P. C. D.Milly¹ 

关键词: Hydrologic model;    Climate change;    Potential evapotranspiration;   

DOI  :  10.1175/2010EI363.1

学科分类：地球科学(综合)

来源: American Geophysical Union

【 摘 要 】

Abstract Hydrologic models often are applied to adjust projections of hydroclimatic change that come from climate models. Such adjustment includes climate-bias correction, spatial refinement (“downscaling”), and consideration of the roles of hydrologic processes that were neglected in the climate model. Described herein is a quantitative analysis of the effects of hydrologic adjustment on the projections of runoff change associated with projected twenty-first-century climate change. In a case study including three climate models and 10 river basins in the contiguous United States, the authors find that relative (i.e., fractional or percentage) runoff change computed with hydrologic adjustment more often than not was less positive (or, equivalently, more negative) than what was projected by the climate models. The dominant contributor to this decrease in runoff was a ubiquitous change in runoff (median −11%) caused by the hydrologic model’s apparent amplification of the climate-model-implied growth in pote...

【 授权许可】

Unknown