A blueprint for coupling a hydrological model with fine- and coarse-scale atmospheric regional climate change models for probabilistic streamflow projections

In cold regions, climate change, including warming and changes in snowmelt dynamics, have profound impacts on streamflow patterns, often leading to flooding events. Understanding the projected changes in hydrometeorological factors contributing to streamflow, such as snowmelt runoff and rain-on-snowmelt, is crucial for effective adaptation and mitigation strategies. It is also essential to consider uncertainty in streamflow projections and incorporate this uncertainty into flood predictions. This study presents a blueprint for calculating probabilistic future streamflow and flow duration curves in a mountainous cold region. The methodology integrated forcings from an atmospheric model (WRF) with a hydrological model (MESH) at fine spatial (4 km) and temporal (3-hourly) resolutions. To account for uncertainty, an ensemble of 15 CanRCM4 regional climate simulations with varying boundary conditions for the RCP 8.5 scenario was utilized. A novel method was developed to perturb the CanRCM4 simulations’ precipitation using a WRF Pseudo Global Warming run to incorporate uncertainty. This comprehensive approach revealed significant uncertainty in streamflow driven by internal variability. WRF-driven simulations without uncertainty showed a decrease in future streamflow extremes, while the perturbed simulations demonstrated the potential for substantially higher values under climate change. Moreover, the study derived probabilistic flow duration curves from the streamflow projections, aiding in estimating flood frequency for floodplain mapping when driving local hydraulic models. The methodology developed in this work can be extended to other river basins in Canada and elsewhere where gridded downscaled climate model outputs are available.

Subjects

Floodplain mapping | Flow duration curves | Hydrological modelling | Streamflow projections | Uncertainty

DDC Class

600: Technology

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A blueprint for coupling a hydrological model with fine- and coarse-scale atmospheric regional climate change models for probabilistic streamflow projections