River runoff components change variably and respond differently to climate change in the Eurasian Arctic and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau permafrost regions

Cryohydrological processes in the Eurasian Arctic and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) permafrost regions have been changing rapidly, yet the details of the river runoff changes are still obscure. Here we use multidecadal natural daily discharge data to compute annual flow duration curves (FDCs) and perc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Hydrology
Main Authors: Song, Chunlin, Wang, Genxu, Sun, Xiangyang, Hu, Zhaoyong
Format: Report
Language:English
Published: ELSEVIER 2021
Subjects:
Cryohydrology
River discharge
Permafrost
Flow duration curve
OBSERVED TRENDS
DISCHARGE
FLOW
VARIABILITY
STREAMFLOW
IMPACT
DEGRADATION
TEMPERATURE
INDICATORS
HYDROLOGY
Engineering
Geology
Water Resources
Civil
Geosciences
Multidisciplinary
Arctic
Climate change
permafrost
Online Access:http://ir.imde.ac.cn/handle/131551/56215
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126653
Description
Summary:Cryohydrological processes in the Eurasian Arctic and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) permafrost regions have been changing rapidly, yet the details of the river runoff changes are still obscure. Here we use multidecadal natural daily discharge data to compute annual flow duration curves (FDCs) and percentile flows for 20 Eurasian Arctic and QTP river basins with permafrost underlain. We provide detailed trends of various percentile flows that almost all runoff components change variably, either with the distinct magnitude or opposite direction or both. We demonstrate that the lower flows increase monotonically faster than higher flows. Most low flows increase while the high flows show spatial heterogeneity with both increased and decreased trends observed. The portion of deep and total groundwater flow in total discharge increases, with the deep groundwater flow increases faster. Interestingly, the river runoff components respond differently to climatic change factors. The low flows, mainly sustained by groundwater, are more sensitive to warming than high flows, while the high flows are more sensitive to precipitation than low flows. Our results may suggest an increased subsurface hydrological connectivity under the warming climate and thawing permafrost. We show that FDCs have the potential to reveal the long-term runoff components change. Future climatic change may alter the shapes and distributions of FDCs since the asynchronous changes of runoff components, which have important implications for cold region river management and mitigation under climatic change.

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