Abstract
Scenario-neutral response surfaces illustrate the sensitivity of a simulated natural system, represented by a specific impact variable, to systematic perturbations of climatic parameters. This type of approach has recently been developed as an alternative to top-down approaches for the assessment of climate change impacts. A major limitation of this approach is the underrepresentation of changes in the temporal structure of the climate input data (i.e., the seasonal and day-to-day variability) since this is not altered by the perturbation. This paper presents a framework that aims to examine this limitation by perturbing both observed and projected climate data time series for a future period, which both serve as input into a hydrological model (the HBV model). The resulting multiple response surfaces are compared at a common domain, the standardized runoff response surface (SRRS). We apply this approach in a case study catchment in Norway to (i) analyze possible changes in mean and extreme runoff and (ii) quantify the influence of changes in the temporal structure represented by 17 different climate input sets using linear mixed-effect models. Results suggest that climate change induced increases in mean and peak flow runoff and only small changes in low flow. They further suggest that the effect of the different temporal structures of the climate input data considerably affects low flows and floods (at least 21% influence), while it is negligible for mean runoff.
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Acknowledgements
The first author acknowledges the Helmholtz graduate school GeoSim for funding the PhD studentship. The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) is thanked for providing the hydrological model code and the runoff and climate observation data. The regional climate model simulations stem from the EU FP6 project ENSEMBLES, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. All statistical analyses and visualizations (except S1) were performed within the R software environment (www-r-project.org). Critical comments by three anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this manuscript helped to improve this paper.
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Vormoor, K., Rössler, O., Bürger, G. et al. When timing matters-considering changing temporal structures in runoff response surfaces. Climatic Change 142, 213–226 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1940-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1940-1