Decreasing river discharge in northern Canada

• Main Authors: Stephen J. Déry, E. F. Wood, Timescales Citation Déry
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2005
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada; Kendall; Pacific; Arctic Archipelago; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.493.2276; http://nhg.unbc.ca/publicationfiles/2005GL022845.pdf

[1] Freshwater discharge to high-latitude oceans in 64 Canadian rivers is investigated. The mean annual discharge rate attains 1252 km3 yr1 for an area of 5.6 106 km2, equating to a sink of 225 mm yr1 in the surface water budget of northern Canada (excluding the Arctic Archipelago where insufficient data exist). Application of the Mann-Kendall test to the data reveals a 10 % decrease (125 km3 yr1 or 22 mm yr1) in the total annual river discharge to the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans from 1964 to 2003. This trend in river runoff is consistent with a 21 mm yr1 decline in observed precipitation over northern Canada between 1964 and 2000. We find evidence of statistically-significant links between the Arctic Oscillation, El Niño/Southern Oscillation, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to the total annual freshwater discharge in northern Canada’s rivers at interannual-to-decadal