scholarly journals Assessing future discharge of the river Rhine using regional climate model integrations and a hydrological model

2003 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 233-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
MV Shabalova ◽  
WPA van Deursen ◽  
TA Buishand
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 5687-5737 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Tramblay ◽  
D. Ruelland ◽  
S. Somot ◽  
R. Bouaicha ◽  
E. Servat

Abstract. In the framework of the international CORDEX program, new regional climate model (RCM) simulations at high spatial resolutions are becoming available for the Mediterranean region (Med-CORDEX initiative). This study provides the first evaluation for hydrological impact studies of these high-resolution simulations. Different approaches are compared to analyze the climate change impacts on the hydrology of a catchment located in North Morocco, using a high-resolution RCM (ALADIN-Climate) from the Med-CORDEX initiative at two different spatial resolutions (50 km and 12 km) and for two different Radiative Concentration Pathway scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). The main issues addressed in the present study are: (i) what is the impact of increased RCM resolution on present-climate hydrological simulations and on future projections? (ii) Are the bias-correction of the RCM model and the parameters of the hydrological model stationary and transferable to different climatic conditions? (iii) What is the climate and hydrological change signal based on the new Radiative Concentration Pathways scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5)? Results indicate that high resolution simulations at 12 km better reproduce the seasonal patterns, the seasonal distributions and the extreme events of precipitation. The parameters of the hydrological model, calibrated to reproduce runoff at the monthly time step over the 1984–2010 period, do not show a strong variability between dry and wet calibration periods in a differential split-sample test. However the bias correction of precipitation by quantile-matching does not give satisfactory results in validation using the same differential split-sample testing method. Therefore a quantile-perturbation method that does not rely on any stationarity assumption and produces ensembles of perturbed series of precipitation was introduced. The climate change signal under scenarios 4.5 and 8.5 indicates a decrease of respectively −30% to −57% in surface runoff for the mid-term (2041–2062), when for the same period the projections for precipitation are ranging between −15% and −19% and for temperature between +1.28°C and +1.87°C.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (10) ◽  
pp. 3721-3739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Tramblay ◽  
D. Ruelland ◽  
S. Somot ◽  
R. Bouaicha ◽  
E. Servat

Abstract. In the framework of the international CORDEX program, new regional climate model (RCM) simulations at high spatial resolutions are becoming available for the Mediterranean region (Med-CORDEX initiative). This study provides the first evaluation for hydrological impact studies of one of these high-resolution simulations in a 1800 km2 catchment located in North Morocco. Different approaches are compared to analyze the climate change impacts on the hydrology of this catchment using a high-resolution RCM (ALADIN-Climate) from the Med-CORDEX initiative at two different spatial resolutions (50 and 12 km) and for two different Radiative Concentration Pathway scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). The main issues addressed in the present study are: (i) what is the impact of increased RCM resolution on present-climate hydrological simulations and on future projections? (ii) Are the bias-correction of the RCM model and the parameters of the hydrological model stationary and transferable to different climatic conditions? (iii) What is the climate and hydrological change signal based on the new Radiative Concentration Pathways scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5)? Results indicate that high resolution simulations at 12 km better reproduce the seasonal patterns, the seasonal distributions and the extreme events of precipitation. The parameters of the hydrological model, calibrated to reproduce runoff at the monthly time step over the 1984–2010 period, do not show a strong variability between dry and wet calibration periods in a differential split-sample test. However the bias correction of precipitation by quantile-matching does not give satisfactory results in validation using the same differential split-sample testing method. Therefore a quantile-perturbation method that does not rely on any stationarity assumption and produces ensembles of perturbed series of precipitation was introduced. The climate change signal under scenarios 4.5 and 8.5 indicates a decrease of respectively −30 to −57% in surface runoff for the mid-term (2041–2062), when for the same period the projections for precipitation are ranging between −15 and −19% and for temperature between +1.3 and +1.9 °C.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 4589-4618 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. C. van Pelt ◽  
P. Kabat ◽  
H. W. ter Maat ◽  
B. J. J. M. van den Hurk ◽  
A. H. Weerts

Abstract. Studies have demonstrated that precipitation on Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes has increased in the last decades and that it is likely that this trend will continue. This will have an influence on discharge of the river Meuse. The use of bias correction methods is important when the effect of precipitation change on river discharge is studied. The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of using two different bias correction methods on output from a Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulation. In this study a Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO2) run is used, forced by ECHAM-5 under the condition of the SRES-A1B emission scenario, with a 25 km horizontal resolution. The RACMO2 runs contain a systematic precipitation bias on which two bias correction methods are applied. The first method corrects for the wet day fraction and wet day average (WD bias correction) and the second method corrects for the mean and coefficient of variance (MV bias correction). The WD bias correction initially corrects well for the average, but it appears that too many successive precipitation days were removed with this correction. The second method performed less well on average bias correction, but the temporal precipitation pattern was better. Subsequently, the discharge was calculated by using RACMO2 output as forcing to the HBV-96 hydrological model. A large difference was found between the simulated discharge of the uncorrected RACMO2 run, the WD bias corrected run and the MV bias corrected run. These results show the importance of an appropriate bias correction.


2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2387-2397 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. C. van Pelt ◽  
P. Kabat ◽  
H. W. ter Maat ◽  
B. J. J. M. van den Hurk ◽  
A. H. Weerts

Abstract. Studies have demonstrated that precipitation on Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes has increased in the last decades and that it is likely that this trend will continue. This will have an influence on discharge of the river Meuse. The use of bias correction methods is important when the effect of precipitation change on river discharge is studied. The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of using two different bias correction methods on output from a Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulation. In this study a Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO2) run is used, forced by ECHAM5/MPIOM under the condition of the SRES-A1B emission scenario, with a 25 km horizontal resolution. The RACMO2 runs contain a systematic precipitation bias on which two bias correction methods are applied. The first method corrects for the wet day fraction and wet day average (WD bias correction) and the second method corrects for the mean and coefficient of variance (MV bias correction). The WD bias correction initially corrects well for the average, but it appears that too many successive precipitation days were removed with this correction. The second method performed less well on average bias correction, but the temporal precipitation pattern was better. Subsequently, the discharge was calculated by using RACMO2 output as forcing to the HBV-96 hydrological model. A large difference was found between the simulated discharge of the uncorrected RACMO2 run, the WD bias corrected run and the MV bias corrected run. These results show the importance of an appropriate bias correction.


2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeng Xinmin ◽  
Zhao Ming ◽  
Su Bingkai ◽  
Tang Jianping ◽  
Zheng Yiqun ◽  
...  

2013 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 173-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
X Wang ◽  
M Yang ◽  
G Wan ◽  
X Chen ◽  
G Pang

2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-163
Author(s):  
X Liu ◽  
Y Kang ◽  
Q Liu ◽  
Z Guo ◽  
Y Chen ◽  
...  

The regional climate model RegCM version 4.6, developed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis, was used to simulate the radiation budget over China. Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) satellite data were utilized to evaluate the simulation results based on 4 radiative components: net shortwave (NSW) radiation at the surface of the earth and top of the atmosphere (TOA) under all-sky and clear-sky conditions. The performance of the model for low-value areas of NSW was superior to that for high-value areas. NSW at the surface and TOA under all-sky conditions was significantly underestimated; the spatial distribution of the bias was negative in the north and positive in the south, bounded by 25°N for the annual and seasonal averaged difference maps. Compared with the all-sky condition, the simulation effect under clear-sky conditions was significantly better, which indicates that the cloud fraction is the key factor affecting the accuracy of the simulation. In particular, the bias of the TOA NSW under the clear-sky condition was <±10 W m-2 in the eastern areas. The performance of the model was better over the eastern monsoon region in winter and autumn for surface NSW under clear-sky conditions, which may be related to different levels of air pollution during each season. Among the 3 areas, the regional average biases overall were largest (negative) over the Qinghai-Tibet alpine region and smallest over the eastern monsoon region.


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