Exploring the operational impacts of climate change and glacier loss in the upper Columbia River Basin, Canada,Hydrological Processes

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Exploring the operational impacts of climate change and glacier loss in the upper Columbia River Basin, Canada
Hydrological Processes ( IF 2.8 ) Pub Date : 2021-05-24 , DOI: 10.1002/hyp.14253
Kai Tsuruta ₁ , Markus A. Schnorbus ₁

Affiliation

The mountainous watersheds of western Canada are generally thought to be in a state of transition from snow-dominated to hybrid regimes. In stream networks that are regulated, the effects of this transition on streamflow can have compelling operational consequences. Seasonal magnitude changes may impact spill-risk management, while changes in the composition of summer runoff may increase its variability and reduce the forecasting capabilities of state variables like peak snow water equivalent. Though glacier loss can have a considerable impact on summer runoff, few studies explicitly model the ongoing glacier recession in conjunction with other primary hydrological processes. In this study, we incorporate glacier dynamics from a previous run of the Regional Glaciation Model into the University of British Columbia Watershed Model via the Raven modelling framework. We use this modelling system to explore potential changes under Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5 to the hydrology of the

\sim 20 000 {km}^{2}

Mica Basin, a regulated watershed containing the headwaters of the Columbia River. Our results project statistically significant increases in spring flow in future eras, which may force lower reservoir drafting in late winter, creating potential for energy shortfalls in early spring. We project the coefficient of variation of summer runoff generally goes unchanged in future eras as does the summer runoff forecasting capability of April 1st SWE. Hence, despite modelled glacier loss and reduced snowmelt contribution, our study does not reject the null hypothesis that the predictability of the Mica Basin's summer runoff is unchanged in future eras. We explore these results in detail because they superficially appear to contrast the conventional conceptualization that reduced snowmelt negatively affects the predictive powers of snowpack and glacier loss increases the variability of runoff. We argue that our results' apparent discordance from convention displays the complexities inherent in isolating the effects of changes to a single water balance component when other components are also non-stationary and highlights the benefits of using modelling to more explicitly explore such implications.

中文翻译：

探索气候变化和冰川流失对加拿大哥伦比亚河流域上游的业务影响

加拿大西部的山区流域通常被认为处于从以雪为主向混合状态过渡的状态。在受监管的河流网络中，这种转变对河流流量的影响可能会产生令人信服的运营后果。季节性幅度变化可能会影响溢出风险管理，而夏季径流成分的变化可能会增加其可变性并降低雪水当量峰值等状态变量的预测能力。尽管冰川流失会对夏季径流产生相当大的影响，但很少有研究明确模拟持续的冰川衰退与其他主要水文过程。在这项研究中，我们通过 Raven 建模框架将先前运行的区域冰川模型中的冰川动力学整合到不列颠哥伦比亚大学流域模型中。我们使用这个建模系统来探索在代表性浓度途径 4.5 和 8.5 下对水文的潜在变化。

～ 20 000 {公里}^{2}

云母盆地，一个受管制的流域，包含哥伦比亚河的源头。我们的结果预测，未来时代春季流量在统计上会显着增加，这可能会迫使冬季后期水库采水量降低，从而造成早春能源短缺的可能性。我们预计夏季径流的变异系数在未来时代通常会保持不变，4 月 1 日 SWE 的夏季径流预测能力也是如此。因此，尽管模拟了冰川损失和融雪贡献减少，但我们的研究并未拒绝云母盆地夏季径流的可预测性在未来时代不变的零假设。我们详细探讨了这些结果，因为它们表面上似乎与传统的概念形成对比，即减少融雪会对积雪的预测能力产生负面影响，而冰川损失会增加径流的可变性。我们认为，我们的结果与惯例的明显不一致表明，当其他成分也非平稳时，将变化对单个水平衡成分的影响隔离开来所固有的复杂性，并强调了使用建模更明确地探索此类影响的好处。

更新日期：2021-07-06

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