Abstract
The present study attempts to investigate potential impacts of climate change on floods frequency in Bazoft Basin which is located in central part of Iran. A combination of four general circulation models is used through a weighting approach to assess uncertainty in the climate projections. LARS-WG model is applied to downscale large scale atmospheric data to local stations. The resulting data is in turn used as input of the hydrological model Water and Energy Transfer between Soil, plants and atmosphere (WetSpa) to simulate runoff for present (1971–2000), near future (2020–2049) and far future (2071–2100) conditions. Results demonstrate good performance of both WetSpa and LARS-WG models. In addition in this paper instantaneous peak flow (IPF) is estimated using some empirical equations including Fuller, Sangal and Fill–Steiner methods. Comparison of estimated and observed IPF shows that Fill–Steiner is better than other methods. Then different probability distribution functions are fit to IPF series. Results of flood frequency analysis indicate that Pearson III is the best distribution fitted to IPF data. It is also indicated that flood magnitude will decrease in future for all return periods.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Long Ashton Research Station-weather generator.
References
Almasi P (2014) Assessment of the climate change impacts on flood frequency in Bazoft Basin. MSc Thesis, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran
Arnell NW, Reynard NS (1996) The effects of climate change due to global warming on river flows in Great Britain. J Hydrol 183:397–424
Ballinger J, Jackson B, Reisinger A, Stokes K (2011) The potential effects of climate change on flood frequency in the Hutt River. NZCCRI-2011-03
Batelaan O, Wang ZM, de Smedt F (1996) An adaptive GIS toolbox for hydrological modelling. In: Kovar K, Nachtnebel HP (eds) Application of geographic information systems in hydrology and water resources management. IAHS Publ. no. 235, p 3–9
Bobee B, Robitaualie R (1977) The use of the Pearson type 3 and log Pearson type 3 distributions revisited. Water Resour Res 13(2):427–443
Boé J, Terray L, Habets F, Martin E (2007) Statistical and dynamical downscaling of the Seine Basin climate for hydro-meteorological studies. Int J Climatol 27(12):1643–1656
Cameron D, Beven K, Tawn J, Naden P (2000) Flood frequency estimation by continuous simulation under climate change (with uncertainty). Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 4(3):393–405
Cline WR (2007) Global warming and agriculture: impact estimates by country. Peterson Institute, Washington, DC
Dastorani M, Salimi Koochi J, Talebi A, Abghari H (2011) Evaluation of the applicability of some methods to estimate Instantaneous Peak Flow using daily flow data. J Range Watershed 84(1):25–37 (in Persian)
Delworth TL, Broccoli AJ, Rosati A, Stouffer RJ, Balaji V, Beesley JA (2006) GFDL’s CM2 global coupled climate models, part Ι: formulation and simulation characteristics. J Clim 19:643–674
Demissie SS, Cunnane C (2002) Representation of climate change in flood frequency estimation, in: Celtic water in European framework—pointing the way to quality. In: Proceedings of the 3rd inter-Celtic colloquium on hydrology and management of water resources. National University of Ireland, Galway
Déqué M, Dreveton C, Braun A, Cariolle D (1994) The ARPEGE/IFS atmosphere model: a contribution to the French community climate modelling. Clim Dyn 10(4–5):249–266
Dibike YB, Coulibaly P (2005) Hydrologic impact of climate change in the Saguenay watershed: comparison of downscaling methods and hydrologic models. J Hydrol 307(1):145–163
Dobler C, Burger G, Stotter J (2012) Assessment of the climate change impacts on flood hazard potential in the Alpine Lech watershed. J Hydrol 460:29–39
Durrans SR (1992) Parameter estimation for the Pearson type 3 distribution using order statistics. J Hydrol Eng 133:215–232
Fill HD, Steiner AA (2003) Estimating IPF from mean daily flow data. J Hydrol Eng ASCE 8(6):365–369
Fuller WE (1914) Flood flows. Trans Am Soc Civ Eng 77:564–617
Ghosh Sh, Dutta S (2012) Impact of climate change on flood characteristics in Brahmaputra Basin using a macro-scale distributed hydrological model. Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati
Goldblum D (2009) Sensitivity of corn and soybean yield in Illinois to air temperature and precipitation: the potential impact of future climate change. Phys Geogr 30(1):27–42
Gordon C, Cooper C, Senior CA, Banks H, Gregory JM, Johns TC, Wood RA (2000) The simulation of SST, sea ice extents and ocean heat transports in a version of the Hadley Centre coupled model without flux adjustments. Clim Dyn 16(2–3):147–168
Hashmi MZ, Shamseldin AY, Melville BW (2011) Comparison of SDSM and LARS-WG for simulation and downscaling of extreme precipitation events in a watershed. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 25(4):475–484
Hellstrom C, Chen D, Achberger C, Raisanen J (2001) Comparison of climate change scenarios for Sweden based on statistical and dynamical downscaling of monthly precipitation. Clim Res 19(1):45–55
Hosking JRM, Wallis JR (1997) Regional frequency analysis an approach based on L-moment. Cambridge University, Cambridge
Hulme M, Barrow EM, Arnell NW, Harrison PA, Johns TC, Downing TE (1999) Relative impacts of human-induced climate change and natural climate variability. Nature 397:689–691
IPCC (2007) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Jalalian A, Mohammadi M (1997) Land suitability of North Karoon Basin. Iran Ministry of Agriculture
Khoramian A (2012) Assessment of the impacts of climate change on snow melting runoff process in upper region of Zayanderud Basin. MSc Thesis, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran
Kucharik CJ, Serbin SP (2008) Impacts of recent climate change on Wisconsin corn and soybean yield trends. Environ Res Lett 3(3):034003
Liu YB, De Smedt F (2004) WetSpa extension, a GIS-based hydrologic model for flood prediction and watershed management, documentation and user manual. Department of Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering, Vrije universiteity Brussel, Brussels
McFarlane NA, Boer GJ, Blanchet JP, Lazare M (1992) The Canadian Climate Centre second-generation general circulation model and its equilibrium climate. J Clim 5(10):1013–1044
Nash JE, Sutcliffe JV (1970) River flow forecasting through conceptual model. J Hydrol 10:282–290
NERC (1975) Flood studies report. London
Porretta L, Chormanski J, Ignar S, Okruszko T, Brandyk A, Szymczak T, Krezalek K (2010) Evaluation and verification of the WetSpa model based on selected rural catchments in Poland. J Water Land Dev 14:115–133
Raff DA, Sutley D, Pruitt T, Brekke LD (2010) Flood frequency in a changing climate, projections approach and diagnostics. In: 2nd Joint Federal Interagency conference, Las Vegas
Rao R, Hamed KH (2000) Flood frequency analysis. CRC Press, Boca Raton
Reynard N, Crooks S, Wiley R, Kay A (2004) Impact of climate change on flood flows in river catchments. Final report for Defra/EA project W5B-01-050
Saeidi H (2014) Climate change impact on low flows in Zayandeh-Rud River Basin. MSc Thesis, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran
Sangal BP (1983) Practical method of estimating peak flow. J Hydraul Eng 109(4):549–563
Semenov MA (2007) Development of high-resolution UKCIP02-based climate change scenarios in the UK. Agric For Meteorol 144(1):127–138
Semenov MA, Stratonovitch P (2010) Use of multi-model ensembles from global climate models for assessment of climate change impacts. Clim Res 41(1):1 (open access for articles 4 years old and older)
Stern N (2007) The economics of climate change: the Stern review. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Strauss F, Formayer H, Schmid E (2013) High resolution climate data for Austria in the period 2008–2040 from a statistical climate change model. Int J Climatol 33(2):430–443
Taleb Mored H (2012) Climate change effects on surface and ground water resources using hydrological model HydroGeoSphere in Hamedan–Bahar Plain. MSc Thesis, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran
Wang Z, Batelaan O, De Smedt F (1997) A distributed model for water and energy transfer between soil, plants and atmosphere. J Phys Chem Earth 21:189–193
Wigley TML, Raper SCB (1992) Implications for climate and sea level of revised IPCC emissions scenarios. Nature 357:293–300
Wilby RL, Dawson CW, Barrow EM (2002) SDSM—a decision support tool for the assessment of regional climate change impacts. Environ Model Softw 17(2):145–157
Winkler JA (2015) Selection of climate information for regional climate change assessments using regionalization techniques: an example for the Upper Great Lakes Region, USA. Int J Climatol 35(6):1027–1040
Zareian MJ (2015) Investigation of water allocation in Zayandehrud Dam under climate change effects with a view to optimizing water resources and use. PhD Thesis, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran
Zareian MJ, Eslamian S, Safavi HR (2014) A modified regionalization weighting approach for climate change impact assessment at watershed scale. Theor Appl Climatol 122:497–516
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Almasi, P., Soltani, S. Assessment of the climate change impacts on flood frequency (case study: Bazoft Basin, Iran). Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 31, 1171–1182 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-016-1263-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-016-1263-1