Ultra-high resolution regional climate projections for assessing changes in hydrological extremes and underlying uncerta
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Ultra‑high resolution regional climate projections for assessing changes in hydrological extremes and underlying uncertainties Y. Qing1 · S. Wang1,2 · B. Zhang1 · Y. Wang3 Received: 10 March 2020 / Accepted: 9 July 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The frequency and intensity of extreme hydrological events (droughts and floods) have been increasing over the past few decades, which has been posing a threat to water security and agriculture production. Thus, projecting the future evolution of hydrological extremes plays a crucial role in sustainable water management and agriculture development in a changing climate. In this study, we develop the high-resolution projections of multidimensional drought characteristics and flood risks using the convection-permitting Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with the horizontal grid spacing of 4 km for the Blanco and Mission River basins over South Texas. Uncertainties in model parameters are addressed explicitly, thereby leading to probabilistic assessments of hydrological extremes. Our findings reveal that the probabilistic multivariate assessments of drought and flood risks can reduce the underestimation and the biased conclusions generated from the univariate assessment. Furthermore, our findings disclose that future droughts are expected to become more severe over South Texas even though the frequency of the occurrence of droughts is projected to decrease, especially for the long-term drought episodes. In addition, South Texas region is expected to experience more floods with an increasing river discharge. Moreover, the Blanco and Mission river basins will suffer from higher flood risks as flood return periods are expected to become longer under climate change. Keywords Regional climate projection · Hydrological extremes · Drought · Flood · Copula
1 Introduction Extreme hydrological events (droughts and floods) have been one of the most dangerous and expensive natural disasters associated with climate change and human activities, which can cause significant losses, especially in water resources, agriculture, environment, and social economy (Raziel et al. 2009; Mishra and Singh 2010; Xiao et al. 2016; Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05372-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * S. Wang [email protected] 1
Department of Land Surveying and Geo‑Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
2
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, China
3
Department of Geosciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA
Zuo et al. 2016; Li et al. 2019; Chen et al. 2020). During the past few decades, hydrological extremes have become more intense and frequent around the world in a changing climate, which has been receiving great attention from the hydroclimate community (Parry et al. 2007). Hence, assessing the dynamic evolution of hydrological ex
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