scholarly journals Changes in Extreme Precipitation across 30 Global River Basins

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1527
Author(s):  
Xin Feng ◽  
Zhaoli Wang ◽  
Xushu Wu ◽  
Jiabo Yin ◽  
Shuni Qian ◽  
...  

Extreme precipitation can cause disasters such as floods, landslides and crop destruction. A further study on extreme precipitation is essential for enabling reliable projections of future changes. In this study, the trends and frequency distribution changes in extreme precipitation across different major river basins around the world during 1960–2011 were examined based on two of the latest observational data sets respectively collected from 110,000 and 26,592 global meteorological stations. The results showed that approximately a quarter of basins have experienced statistically significant increase in maximum consecutive one-day, three-day and five-day precipitation (RX1day, RX3day and RX5day, respectively). In particular, dramatic increases were found in the recent decade for the Syr Darya River basin (SDR) and Amu Darya River basin (ADR) in the Middle East, while a decrease in RX3day and RX5day were seen over the Amur River basin in East Asia. One third of basins showed remarkable changes in frequency distributions of the three indices, and in most cases the distributions shifted toward larger amounts of extreme precipitation. Relative to the subperiod of 1960–1984, wider range of the three indices over SDR and ADR were detected for 1985–2011, indicating intensification along with larger fluctuations of extreme precipitation. However, some basins have frequency distributions shifting toward smaller amounts of RX3day and RX5day, such as the Columbia River basin and the Yellow River basin. The study has potential to provide the most up-to-date and comprehensive global picture of extreme precipitation, which help guide wiser public policies in future to mitigate the effects of these changes across global river basins.

Author(s):  
Dongyang Xiao ◽  
Haipeng Niu ◽  
Jin Guo ◽  
Suxia Zhao ◽  
Liangxin Fan

The significant spatial heterogeneity among river basin ecosystems makes it difficult for local governments to carry out comprehensive governance for different river basins in a special administrative region spanning multi-river basins. However, there are few studies on the construction of a comprehensive governance mechanism for multi-river basins at the provincial level. To fill this gap, this paper took Henan Province of China, which straddles four river basins, as the study region. The chord diagram, overlay analysis, and carbon emission models were applied to the remote sensing data of land use to analyze the temporal and spatial patterns of carbon storage caused by land-use changes in Henan Province from 1990 to 2018 to reflect the heterogeneity of the contribution of the four basins to human activities and economic development. The results revealed that food security land in the four basins decreased, while production and living land increased. Ecological conservation land was increased over time in the Yangtze River Basin. In addition, the conversion from food security land to production and living land was the common characteristic for the four basins. Carbon emission in Henan increased from 134.46 million tons in 1990 to 553.58 million tons in 2018, while its carbon absorption was relatively stable (1.67–1.69 million tons between 1990 and 2018). The carbon emitted in the Huai River Basin was the main contributor to Henan Province’s total carbon emission. The carbon absorption in Yellow River Basin and Yangtze River Basin had an obvious spatial agglomeration effect. Finally, considering the current need of land spatial planning in China and the goal of carbon neutrality by 2060 set by the Chinese government, we suggested that carbon sequestration capacity should be further strengthened in Yellow River Basin and Yangtze River Basin based on their respective ecological resource advantages. For future development in Hai River Basin and Huai River Basin, coordinating the spatial allocation of urban scale and urban green space to build an ecological city is a key direction to embark upon.


2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 1387-1396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Zhao ◽  
Xiangde Xu ◽  
Wubin Huang ◽  
Yuhong Wang ◽  
Yanling Xu ◽  
...  

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2035
Author(s):  
Lejun Ma ◽  
Huan Wang ◽  
Changjun Qi ◽  
Xinnan Zhang ◽  
Hanwen Zhang

The construction and operation of water storage and hydropower projects affects the structure of water ecosystems of downstream rivers, and the establishment of ecological flow in rivers below the water storage and hydropower projects has significant impacts on maintaining the stability of river ecosystems. A database was established based on 2000–2017 environmental impact assessment (EIA) reports on water storage and hydropower projects in China and ecological flow (e-flow) methods, and the three widely used e-flow methods for water storage and hydropower projects in China were identified on the database. Furthermore, an ecological flow satisfaction degree model was used to evaluate the methods using long series of historical hydrological data from the hydrological stations in the Yellow River basin, the Yangtze River basin, and the Liao River basin. The results showed that hydrological methods are the type most often used for water storage and hydropower projects in China, including the Tennant method, the minimum monthly average flow with 90% guarantee rate method (Mm9M method), and the measured historical minimum daily average flow rate method (MDM method). However, the ecological flow methods selected are not significantly different among different basins, indicating that the selection of ecological flow methods is rather arbitrary, and adaptability analysis is not available. The results of the ecological flow satisfaction model showed that the Tennant method is not suitable for large river basins. The results of this study can provide technical support for establishment and management decisions surrounding ecological flow.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzhen Dang ◽  
Xiaoyan Liu ◽  
Huijuan Yin ◽  
Xinwei Guo

The Yellow River is one of the rivers with the largest amount of sediment in the world. The amount of incoming sediment has an important impact on water resources management, sediment regulation schemes, and the construction of water conservancy projects. The Loess Plateau is the main source of sediment in the Yellow River Basin. Floods caused by extreme precipitation are the primary driving forces of soil erosion in the Loess Plateau. In this study, we constructed the extreme precipitation scenarios based on historical extreme precipitation records in the main sediment-yielding area in the middle reaches of the Yellow River. The amount of sediment yield under current land surface conditions was estimated according to the relationship between extreme precipitation and sediment yield observations in the historical period. The results showed that the extreme rainfall scenario of the study area reaches to 159.9 mm, corresponding to a recurrence period of 460 years. The corresponding annual sediment yield under the current land surface condition was range from 0.821 billion tons to 1.899 billion tons, and the median annual sediment yield is 1.355 billion tons, of which more than 91.9% of sediment yields come from the Hekouzhen to Longmen sectionand the Jinghe River basin. Therefore, even though the vegetation of the Loess Plateau has been greatly improved, and a large number of terraces and check dams have been built, the flood control and key project operation of the Yellow River still need to be prepared to deal with the large amount of sediment transport.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 3251-3286 ◽  
Author(s):  
X. Mo ◽  
J. Wu ◽  
Q. Wang ◽  
H. Zhou

Abstract. We applied GRACE Tellus products in combination with GLDAS simulations and data from reports, to analyze variations in terrestrial water storage (TWS) in China and eight of its basins from 2003 to 2013. Amplitudes of TWS were well restored after scaling, and showed good correlations with those estimated from models at the basin scale. TWS generally followed variations in annual precipitation, it decreased linearly in Huai River basin (−0.564 cm yr−1) and increased with fluctuations in Changjiang River basin (0.348 cm yr−1), Zhujiang basin (0.552 cm yr−1) and Southeast Rivers basin (0.696 cm yr−1). In Hai River basin and Yellow River basin, groundwater exploitation may have altered TWS's response to climate, but it began to restore since 2012. Changes in soil moisture storage contributed over 50% in of variances in TWS in most basins. Precipitation and runoff showed large impact on TWS, with explained variances higher in TWS in the south than in the north. North China and Southwest Rivers region exhibited long-term TWS depletions. TWS increased significantly over the recent decade in the middle and lower reaches of Changjiang, southeastern coastal area, as well as the Hoh Xil, and headstream region of the Yellow River in Tibetan plateau. The findings in this study could be helpful to climate change impact research and disaster mitigation planning.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document