Climate change impact on available water resources obtained using multiple global climate and hydrology models

Hagemann, S.; Chen, C.; Clark, D.B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1348-7922; Folwell, S.; Gosling, S.N.; Haddeland, I.; Hanasaki, N.; Heinke, J.; Ludwig, F.; Voss, F.; Wiltshire, A.J.. 2013 Climate change impact on available water resources obtained using multiple global climate and hydrology models. Earth System Dynamics, 4 (1). 129-144. https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-4-129-2013

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Abstract/Summary

Climate change is expected to alter the hydrological cycle resulting in large-scale impacts on water availability. However, future climate change impact assessments are highly uncertain. For the first time, multiple global climate (three) and hydrological models (eight) were used to systematically assess the hydrological response to climate change and project the future state of global water resources. This multi-model ensemble allows us to investigate how the hydrology models contribute to the uncertainty in projected hydrological changes compared to the climate models. Due to their systematic biases, GCM outputs cannot be used directly in hydrological impact studies, so a statistical bias correction has been applied. The results show a large spread in projected changes in water resources within the climate–hydrology modelling chain for some regions. They clearly demonstrate that climate models are not the only source of uncertainty for hydrological change, and that the spread resulting from the choice of the hydrology model is larger than the spread originating from the climate models over many areas. But there are also areas showing a robust change signal, such as at high latitudes and in some midlatitude regions, where the models agree on the sign of projected hydrological changes, indicative of higher confidence in this ensemble mean signal. In many catchments an increase of available water resources is expected but there are some severe decreases in Central and Southern Europe, the Middle East, the Mississippi River basin, southern Africa, southern China and south-eastern Australia.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-4-129-2013
Programmes:	CEH Topics & Objectives 2009 - 2012 > Water > WA Topic 3 - Science for Water Management > WA - 3.2 - Assessment of available water resources in a changing world ...
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Reynard
ISSN:	2190-4979
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	Open Access paper - Official URL link provides full text
NORA Subject Terms:	Hydrology
Related URLs:	Discussion paper
Date made live:	10 May 2013 13:14 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/501803

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