Modeling the Responses of Water and Sediment Discharge to Climate Change in the Upper Yellow River Basin, China

Abstract:

The Yellow River flows through nine provinces and provides water for 30% of China’s population. It is the largest sandy river in the world and its annual transport capacity is about 1.6 billion tons. Water availability and soil erosion in this basin have continuously obtained great concern. The upper Yellow River basin (UYRB) above the Tangnaihai hydrological station contributes over one-third water discharge to the entire Yellow River basin. This contribution and hydrological regime may have been substantially altered over the past decades due to climate change and human activities. Understanding the streamflow regime and sediment transport in the UYRB, especially in the context of climate change, is crucial for sustainable water resource management and soil-water conservation.

In this study, we attempt to quantify the responses of water and sediment discharge to climate change in the UYRB. We employed a distributed hydrological model, i.e., the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), to simulate the runoff and sediment load under different scenarios, including climate change and detrended climate conditions. To predict the future trend, we designed scenarios with Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (CMIP3) down scaled forcing data.

The results indicate that the SWAT model successfully reproduced the historical patterns of water and sediment dischargewith calibration and validation. As a response to the decreased precipitation and increased temperature during 1966-2009, annual runoff and sediment load have significantly decreased with the trends of -11.6 mm/decade and -1.3 million ton/decade, respectively. But precipitation plays a dominate role in reshaping these trends, with the contribution over four times larger than that of temperature. In the near future (2049-2064), however, runoff and sediment load wouldrise to some degree. Especially in the A2 scenario, runoff and sediment load exceed more than double in summer relative to current climate conditions. This may be a good news for water availability but bad news for water-quality control for the entire Yellow River basin.