Increasing Alaskan river discharge during the cold season is driven by recent warming
Arctic hydrology is experiencing rapid changes including earlier snow melt, permafrost degradation, increasing active layer depth, and reduced river ice, all of which are expected to lead to changes in stream flow regimes. Recently, long-term (>60 years) climate reanalysis and river discharge obs...
Published in: | Environmental Research Letters |
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Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acb661 |
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ftncar:oai:drupal-site.org:articles_26091 2023-10-01T03:53:51+02:00 Increasing Alaskan river discharge during the cold season is driven by recent warming Blaskey, Dylan (author) Koch, Joshua C (author) Gooseff, Michael N (author) Newman, Andrew J (author) Cheng, Yifan (author) O’Donnell, Jonathan A (author) Musselman, Keith N (author) 2023-02-01 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acb661 en eng Environmental Research Letters--Environ. Res. Lett.--1748-9326 ERA5-Land hourly data from 2001 to present--10.24381/cds.e2161bac articles:26091 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/acb661 ark:/85065/d7gq72p5 Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. article Text 2023 ftncar https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acb661 2023-09-04T18:21:13Z Arctic hydrology is experiencing rapid changes including earlier snow melt, permafrost degradation, increasing active layer depth, and reduced river ice, all of which are expected to lead to changes in stream flow regimes. Recently, long-term (>60 years) climate reanalysis and river discharge observation data have become available. We utilized these data to assess long-term changes in discharge and their hydroclimatic drivers. River discharge during the cold season (October-April) increased by 10% per decade. The most widespread discharge increase occurred in April (15% per decade), the month of ice break-up for the majority of basins. In October, when river ice formation generally begins, average monthly discharge increased by 7% per decade. Long-term air temperature increases in October and April increased the number of days above freezing (+1.1 d per decade) resulting in increased snow ablation (20% per decade) and decreased snow water equivalent (-12% per decade). Compared to the historical period (1960-1989), mean April and October air temperature in the recent period (1990-2019) have greater correlation with monthly discharge from 0.33 to 0.68 and 0.0-0.48, respectively. This indicates that the recent increases in air temperature are directly related to these discharge changes. Ubiquitous increases in cold and shoulder-season discharge demonstrate the scale at which hydrologic and biogeochemical fluxes are being altered in the Arctic. 1852977 1928078 Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Ice permafrost OpenSky (NCAR/UCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) Arctic Environmental Research Letters 18 2 024042 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
OpenSky (NCAR/UCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) |
op_collection_id |
ftncar |
language |
English |
description |
Arctic hydrology is experiencing rapid changes including earlier snow melt, permafrost degradation, increasing active layer depth, and reduced river ice, all of which are expected to lead to changes in stream flow regimes. Recently, long-term (>60 years) climate reanalysis and river discharge observation data have become available. We utilized these data to assess long-term changes in discharge and their hydroclimatic drivers. River discharge during the cold season (October-April) increased by 10% per decade. The most widespread discharge increase occurred in April (15% per decade), the month of ice break-up for the majority of basins. In October, when river ice formation generally begins, average monthly discharge increased by 7% per decade. Long-term air temperature increases in October and April increased the number of days above freezing (+1.1 d per decade) resulting in increased snow ablation (20% per decade) and decreased snow water equivalent (-12% per decade). Compared to the historical period (1960-1989), mean April and October air temperature in the recent period (1990-2019) have greater correlation with monthly discharge from 0.33 to 0.68 and 0.0-0.48, respectively. This indicates that the recent increases in air temperature are directly related to these discharge changes. Ubiquitous increases in cold and shoulder-season discharge demonstrate the scale at which hydrologic and biogeochemical fluxes are being altered in the Arctic. 1852977 1928078 |
author2 |
Blaskey, Dylan (author) Koch, Joshua C (author) Gooseff, Michael N (author) Newman, Andrew J (author) Cheng, Yifan (author) O’Donnell, Jonathan A (author) Musselman, Keith N (author) |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
title |
Increasing Alaskan river discharge during the cold season is driven by recent warming |
spellingShingle |
Increasing Alaskan river discharge during the cold season is driven by recent warming |
title_short |
Increasing Alaskan river discharge during the cold season is driven by recent warming |
title_full |
Increasing Alaskan river discharge during the cold season is driven by recent warming |
title_fullStr |
Increasing Alaskan river discharge during the cold season is driven by recent warming |
title_full_unstemmed |
Increasing Alaskan river discharge during the cold season is driven by recent warming |
title_sort |
increasing alaskan river discharge during the cold season is driven by recent warming |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acb661 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Ice permafrost |
genre_facet |
Arctic Ice permafrost |
op_relation |
Environmental Research Letters--Environ. Res. Lett.--1748-9326 ERA5-Land hourly data from 2001 to present--10.24381/cds.e2161bac articles:26091 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/acb661 ark:/85065/d7gq72p5 |
op_rights |
Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acb661 |
container_title |
Environmental Research Letters |
container_volume |
18 |
container_issue |
2 |
container_start_page |
024042 |
_version_ |
1778520872267546624 |