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Climate change impacts on ice jam behavior in an inland delta: a new ice jam projection framework

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Abstract

Ice jams are impacted by several climatic factors that are likely to change under a future warming climate. Due to the complexity of river ice phenology, projection of future ice jams is challenging. However, it is important to be able to project future ice jam behavior. Additionally, ice jam research is limited by the shortage of long-term monitoring data. In this paper, a novel framework for projecting future ice jam behavior is developed and implemented for ice jams in a data-sparse region, the Slave River Delta, NWT, Canada, situated in the Mackenzie River Basin (MRB). This framework employs both historical records and future hydro-meteorological data, acquired from climate and hydrological models, to drive the river ice models and quantify climate-induced influences on ice jams. Ice jam behavior analysis is based on three outputs of the framework: potential of river ice jamming, ice jam initiation date, and the stage frequency distribution of backwater elevation induced by ice jams. Trends of later ice jam initiation and decreased possibility of ice jam formation are projected, but ice jamming events in the Slave River Delta are likely to be more severe and cause higher backwater levels.

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Funding

This research is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Global Water Future (GWF) at the University of Saskatchewan, China Scholarship Council (CSC) and Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) Programme in Water Security.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saskatoon, Canada

    Fan Zhang & Karl-Erich Lindenschmidt

  2. Global Institute for Water Security, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

    Mohamed Elshamy

  3. Centre for Hydrology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

    Mohamed Elshamy

Authors
  1. Fan Zhang
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  2. Mohamed Elshamy
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  3. Karl-Erich Lindenschmidt
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Contributions

Fan Zhang proposed the main framework developed in this manuscript, ran the hydraulic simulations, processed model output data, and wrote the manuscript. Mohamed Elshamy pre-processed the climate change data, ran the hydrological simulations, and revised the manuscript. Karl-Erich Lindenschmidt proposed the initial idea of this research and revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Fan Zhang.

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Zhang, F., Elshamy, M. & Lindenschmidt, KE. Climate change impacts on ice jam behavior in an inland delta: a new ice jam projection framework. Climatic Change 171, 13 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-022-03312-3

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