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Accelerated Hydrological Cycle Over the Sanjiangyuan Region Induces More Streamflow Extremes at Different Global Warming Levels

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Accelerated Hydrological Cycle Over the Sanjiangyuan Region Induces More Streamflow Extremes at Different Global Warming Levels Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 5439–5451, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-5439-2020 © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Accelerated hydrological cycle over the Sanjiangyuan region induces more streamflow extremes at different global warming levels Peng Ji1,2, Xing Yuan3, Feng Ma3, and Ming Pan4 1Key Laboratory of Regional Climate-Environment for Temperate East Asia, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China 2College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China 3School of Hydrology and Water Resources, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China 4Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA Correspondence: Xing Yuan ([email protected]) Received: 7 July 2020 – Discussion started: 24 July 2020 Revised: 12 October 2020 – Accepted: 13 October 2020 – Published: 20 November 2020 Abstract. Serving source water for the Yellow, Yangtze and tance of ecological processes in determining future changes Lancang-Mekong rivers, the Sanjiangyuan region affects 700 in streamflow extremes and suggests a “dry gets drier, wet million people over its downstream areas. Recent research gets wetter” condition over the warming headwaters. suggests that the Sanjiangyuan region will become wetter in a warming future, but future changes of streamflow ex- tremes remain unclear due to the complex hydrological pro- cesses over high-land areas and limited knowledge of the in- 1 Introduction fluences of land cover change and CO2 physiological forc- ing. Based on high-resolution land surface modeling dur- Global temperature has increased at a rate of 0.17◦C per ing 1979–2100 driven by the climate and ecological projec- decade since 1970, contrary to the cooling trend over the past tions from 11 newly released Coupled Model Intercompari- 8000 years (Marcott et al., 2013). The temperature measure- son Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) climate models, we show that ments suggest that 2015–2019 is the warmest 5 years and different accelerating rates of precipitation and evapotranspi- 2010–2019 is also the warmest decade since 1850 (WMO, ration at 1.5 ◦C global warming level induce 55 % more dry 2020). To mitigate the impact of this unprecedented warm- extremes over Yellow River and 138 % more wet extremes ing on the global environment and human society, 195 na- over Yangtze River headwaters compared with the reference tions adopted the Paris Agreement, which commits to “hold period (1985–2014). An additional 0.5 ◦C warming leads to the increase in the global average temperature to well below a further nonlinear and more significant increase for both dry 2 ◦C above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit extremes over Yellow River (22 %) and wet extremes over the temperature increase to 1.5 ◦C”. Yangtze River (64 %). The combined role of CO2 physio- The response of regional and global terrestrial hydrologi- logical forcing and vegetation greening, which used to be cal processes (e.g., streamflow and its extremes) to different neglected in hydrological projections, is found to alleviate global warming levels has been investigated by numerous dry extremes at 1.5 and 2.0 ◦C warming levels but to inten- studies in recent years (Döll et al., 2018; Hoegh-Guldberg sify dry extremes at 3.0 ◦C warming level. Moreover, vegeta- et al., 2018; Marx et al., 2018; Mohammed et al., 2017; tion greening contributes half of the differences between 1.5 Thober et al., 2018; Xu et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2016). In and 3.0 ◦C warming levels. This study emphasizes the impor- addition to climate change, recent works reveal the impor- tance of ecological factors (e.g., CO2 physiological forcing Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 5440 P. Ji et al.: Accelerated hydrological cycle over the Sanjiangyuan region and land cover change) in modulating streamflow and its ex- compared with the impact of climate change. The results will tremes. For example, increasing CO2 concentration is found help understand the role of ecological factors in future ter- to alleviate the decreasing trend of streamflow in the future restrial hydrological changes over the headwater regions like at the global scale through decreasing the stomatal conduc- the Sanjiangyuan and provide guidance and support for the tance and vegetation transpiration (known as CO2 physiolog- stakeholders to make relevant decisions and plans. ical forcing) (Fowler et al., 2019; Wiltshire et al., 2013; Yang et al., 2019; Zhu et al., 2012). Contrary to CO2 physiological forcing, vegetation greening in a warming climate is found to 2 Data and methods play a significant role in exacerbating hydrological drought, 2.1 Study domain and observational data as it enhances transpiration and dries up the land (Yuan et al., 2018b). However, the relative contributions of CO2 phys- The Sanjiangyuan region is located at the eastern part of iological forcing and vegetation greening to the changes in the Tibetan Plateau (Fig. 1a), with the total area and mean terrestrial hydrology, especially the streamflow extremes, are elevation being 3.61 × 105 km2 and 5000 m respectively. It still unknown, and whether their combined impact differs plays a critical role in providing freshwater, by contributing among different warming levels needs to be investigated. 35 %, 20 % and 8 % to the total annual streamflow of the Yel- Hosting the headwaters of the Yellow River, the Yangtze low, Yangtze and Lancang-Mekong rivers (Li et al., 2017; River and the Lancang-Mekong River, the Sanjiangyuan Liang et al., 2013). The source regions of Yellow, Yangtze region is known as the “Asian Water Tower” and affects and Lancang-Mekong rivers each account for 46 %, 44 % and 700 million people over its downstream areas. Changes of 10 % of the total area of the Sanjiangyuan, and the Yellow streamflow and its extremes over the Sanjiangyuan region not River source region has a warmer climate and sparser snow only influence local ecosystems, environment and water re- cover than the Yangtze River source region. sources, but also the security of food, energy and water over Monthly streamflow observations from the Tangnaihai the downstream areas. Both the regional climate and ecosys- (TNH) and the Zhimenda (ZMD) hydrological stations tems show significant changes over the Sanjiangyuan region (Fig. 1a), which were provided by the local authorities, were due to global warming (Bibi et al., 2018; Kuang and Jiao, used to evaluate the streamflow simulations. Data periods 2016; Liang et al., 2013; Yang et al., 2013; Zhu et al., 2016). are 1979–2011 and 1980–2008 for the Tangnaihai and Zhi- Historical changes of climate and ecology (e.g., land cover) menda stations, respectively. Estimations of monthly terres- are found to cause significant reduction in mean and high trial water storage change and its uncertainty during 2003– flows over the Yellow River headwaters during 1979–2005, 2014 were provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which potentially increases drought risk over its downstream which used the mass concentration blocks (mascons) as ba- areas (Ji and Yuan, 2018). And CO2 physiological forcing sis functions to fit the Gravity Recovery and Climate Ex- is revealed to cause equally large changes in regional flood periment (GRACE) satellite’s inter-satellite ranging obser- extremes as the precipitation over the Yangtze and Mekong vations (Watkins et al., 2015). The Model Tree Ensemble rivers (Fowler et al., 2019). Thus the Sanjiangyuan region is evapotranspiration (MTE_ET; Jung et al., 2009) and the a sound region to investigate the role of climate change and Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model evapotranspira- ecological change (e.g., land cover change and CO2 phys- tion (GLEAM_ET) version 3.3a (Martens et al., 2017) were iological forcing) in influencing the streamflow and its ex- used to evaluate the ET simulation. tremes (Cuo et al., 2014; Ji and Yuan, 2018; Zhu et al., 2013). Recent research suggests that the Sanjiangyuan region will 2.2 CMIP6 data become warmer and wetter in the future, and extreme precip- itation will also increase at the 1.5 ◦C global warming level Here, 19 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 and further intensify with a 0.5 ◦C additional warming (Li et (CMIP6; Eyring et al., 2016) models which provide pre- al., 2018; Zhao et al., 2019). However, how the streamflow cipitation, near-surface temperature, specific humidity, 10 m extremes would respond to the 1.5 ◦C warming, what an ad- wind speed and surface downward shortwave and long- ditional 0.5 ◦C or even greater warming would cause and how wave radiation at a daily timescale were first selected much ecological factors (e.g., CO2 physiological forcing and for evaluation. Then, models were chosen for the analysis land cover change) contribute are still unknown. Solving the when the simulated meteorological forcings (e.g., precipi- above issues is essential for assessing the climate and eco- tation, temperature, humidity, and shortwave radiation) av- logical impact on this vital headwater region. eraged over the Sanjiangyuan region have the same trend In this study, we investigated the future changes in the signs as the observations during 1979–2014. Table 1 shows streamflow extremes over the Sanjiangyuan region from an the 11 CMIP6 models that were finally chosen in this integrated ecohydrological perspective by taking CO2 phys- study. For the future projection (2015–2100), we chose iological forcing and land cover change into consideration. two Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) experiments: The combined impacts of the above two ecological factors SSP585 and SSP245. SSP585 combines the fossil-fueled at different global warming levels were also quantified and development socioeconomic pathway and 8.5 W m−2 forc- Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 5439–5451, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-5439-2020 P.
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