scholarly journals Drought assessment and trends analysis from 20th century to 21st century over China

Author(s):  
X. L. Yang ◽  
L. L. Ren ◽  
R. Tong ◽  
Y. Liu ◽  
X. R. Cheng ◽  
...  

Abstract. Droughts are becoming the most expensive natural disasters in China and have exerted serious impacts on local economic development and ecological environment. The fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) provides a unique opportunity to assess scientific understanding of climate variability and change over a range of historical and future period. In this study, fine-resolution multimodel climate projections over China are developed based on 7 CMIP5 climate models under RCP8.5 emissions scenarios by means of Bilinear Interpolation and Bias Correction. The results of downscaled CMIP5 models are evaluated over China by comparing the model outputs with the England Reanalysis CRU3.1 from 1951 to 2000. Accordingly, the results from the output of downscaled models are used to calculate the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). Time series of SPI has been used to identify drought from 20th century to 21st century over China. The results show that, most areas of China are projected to become wetter as a consequence of increasing precipitation under RCP8.5 scenarios. Detailed examination shows that the SPI show a slightly increasing trend in the future period for the most parts of China, but drought in Southwest region of China will become the norm in the future RCP8.5 scenarios.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1035-1045
Author(s):  
Farzad Parandin ◽  
Asadollah Khoorani ◽  
Ommolbanin Bazrafshan

Abstract One of the most crucial consequences of climate change involves the alteration of the hydrologic cycle and river flow regime of watersheds. This study was an endeavor to investigate the contributions of climate change to maximum daily discharge (MDD). To this end, the MDD simulation was carried out through implementing the IHACRES precipitation-runoff model in the Payyab Jamash watershed for the 21st century (2016-2100). Subsequently, the observed precipitation and temperature data of the weather stations (1980-2011) as well as 4 multi-model outputs of Global Climate Models (GCMs) under the maximum and minimum Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) (2016-2100) were utilized. In order to downscale the output of GCMs, Bias Correction (BC) statistical method was applied. The projections for the 21st century indicated a reduction in Maximum Daily Precipitation (MDP) in comparison with the historic period in the study area. The average projected MDP for the future period was 9 mm/day and 5 mm/ day under 2.6 and 8.5 RCPs (4.6% and 2.6% decrease compared with the historical period), respectively. Moreover, the temperature increased in Jamash Watershed based on 2.6 and 8.5 RCPs by 1∘C and 2∘C(3.7% and 7.4% increase compared with the historical period), respectively. The findings of flow simulation for the future period indicated a decrease in MDD due to the diminished MDP in the study area. The amount of this decrease under RCP8.5 was not remarkable (0.75 m3/s), whereas its value for RCP2.6 was calculated as 40m3/s (respectively, 0.11% and 5.88% decrease compared with the historical period).


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 100206
Author(s):  
Connie A. Woodhouse ◽  
Rebecca M. Smith ◽  
Stephanie A. McAfee ◽  
Gregory T. Pederson ◽  
Gregory J. McCabe ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Ray Kurzweil

I have been involved in inventing since I was five, and I quickly realized that for an invention to succeed, you have to target the world of the future. But what would the future be like? To find out, I became a student of technology trends and began to develop mathematical models of different technologies: computation, miniaturization, evolution over time. I have been doing that for 25 years, and it has been remarkable to me how powerful and predictive these models are. Now, before I show you some of these models and then try to build with you some of the scenarios for the future—and, in particular, focus on how these will benefit technology for the disabled—I would like to share one trend that I think is particularly profound and that many people fail to take into consideration. It is this: the rate of progress—what I call the “paradigmshift rate”—is itself accelerating. We are doubling this paradigm-shift rate every decade. The whole 20th century was not 100 years of progress as we know it today, because it has taken us a while to speed up to the current level of progress. The 20t h century represented about 20 years of progress in terms of today’s rate. And at today’s rate of change, we will achieve an amount of progress equivalent to that of the whole 20th century in 14 years, then as the acceleration continues, in 7 years. The progress in the 21st century will be about 1,000 times greater than that in the 20th century, which was no slouch in terms of change.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (17) ◽  
pp. 6649-6659 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Weller ◽  
Wenju Cai

Abstract An assessment of how well climate models simulate the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) is undertaken using 20 coupled models that have partaken in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Compared with models in phase 3 (CMIP3), no substantial improvement is evident in the simulation of the IOD pattern and/or amplitude during austral spring [September–November (SON)]. The majority of models in CMIP5 generate a larger variance of sea surface temperature (SST) in the Sumatra–Java upwelling region and an IOD amplitude that is far greater than is observed. Although the relationship between precipitation and tropical Indian Ocean SSTs is well simulated, future projections of SON rainfall changes over IOD-influenced regions are intrinsically linked to the IOD amplitude and its rainfall teleconnection in the model present-day climate. The diversity of the simulated IOD amplitudes in models in CMIP5 (and CMIP3), which tend to be overly large, results in a wide range of future modeled SON rainfall trends over IOD-influenced regions. The results herein highlight the importance of realistically simulating the present-day IOD properties and suggest that caution should be exercised in interpreting climate projections in the IOD-affected regions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (70) ◽  
pp. 89-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion Réveillet ◽  
Antoine Rabatel ◽  
Fabien Gillet-Chaulet ◽  
Alvaro Soruco

AbstractBolivian glaciers are an essential source of fresh water for the Altiplano, and any changes they may undergo in the near future due to ongoing climate change are of particular concern. Glaciar Zongo, Bolivia, located near the administrative capital La Paz, has been extensively monitored by the GLACIOCLIM observatory in the last two decades. Here we model the glacier dynamics using the 3-D full-Stokes model Elmer/Ice. The model was calibrated and validated over a recent period (1997–2010) using four independent datasets: available observations of surface velocities and surface mass balance were used for calibration, and changes in surface elevation and retreat of the glacier front were used for validation. Over the validation period, model outputs are in good agreement with observations (differences less than a small percentage). The future surface mass balance is assumed to depend on the equilibrium-line altitude (ELA) and temperature changes through the sensitivity of ELA to temperature. The model was then forced for the 21st century using temperature changes projected by nine Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) models. Here we give results for three different representative concentration pathways (RCPs). The intermediate scenario RCP6.0 led to 69 ± 7% volume loss by 2100, while the two extreme scenarios, RCP2.6 and RCP8.5, led to 40 ± 7% and 89 ± 4% loss of volume, respectively.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (S1) ◽  
pp. 115-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Jincy Rose ◽  
N. R. Chithra

Abstract Temperature is an indispensable parameter of climate that triggers evapotranspiration and has vital importance in aggravating drought severity. This paper analyses the existence and persistence of drought conditions which are said to prevail in a tropical river basin which was once perennial. Past observed data and future climate projections of precipitation and temperature were used for this purpose. The assessment and projection of this study employ the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) compared with that of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). The results indicate the existence of drought in the past and the drought conditions that may persist in the future according to RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. The past drought years identified in the study were compared with the drought declared years in the state and were found to be matching. The evaluation of the future scenarios unveils the occurrence of drought in the basin ranging from mild to extreme conditions. It has been noted that the number of moderate and severe drought months has increased based on SPEI compared to SPI, indicating the importance of temperature in drought studies. The study can be considered as a plausible scientific remark helpful in risk management and application decisions.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 2266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrique Soriano ◽  
Luis Mediero ◽  
Carlos Garijo

Climate projections provided by EURO-CORDEX predict changes in annual maximum series of daily rainfall in the future in some areas of Spain because of climate change. Precipitation and temperature projections supplied by climate models do not usually fit exactly the statistical properties of the observed time series in the control period. Bias correction methods are used to reduce such errors. This paper seeks to find the most adequate bias correction techniques for temperature and precipitation projections that minimizes the errors between observations and climate model simulations in the control period. Errors in flood quantiles are considered to identify the best bias correction techniques, as flood quantiles are used for hydraulic infrastructure design and safety assessment. In addition, this study aims to understand how the expected changes in precipitation extremes and temperature will affect the catchment response in flood events in the future. Hydrological modelling is required to characterize rainfall-runoff processes adequately in a changing climate, in order to estimate flood changes expected in the future. Four catchments located in the central-western part of Spain have been selected as case studies. The HBV hydrological model has been calibrated in the four catchments by using the observed precipitation, temperature and streamflow data available on a daily scale. Rainfall has been identified as the most significant input to the model, in terms of its influence on flood response. The quantile mapping polynomial correction has been found to be the best bias correction method for precipitation. A general reduction in flood quantiles is expected in the future, smoothing the increases identified in precipitation quantiles by the reduction of soil moisture content in catchments, due to the expected increase in temperature and decrease in mean annual precipitations.


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Thuy Trung Luu

In the history of Vietnamese drama, Saigon was one of the places absorbing Western drama from the early time. Although drama in Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City didn’t develop in a smooth and straight way, it was a continuous and unbroken process. This process brought in strong development of drama in Ho Chi Minh city in two decades of the late 20th century and the early 21st century. However, in recent years, drama in Ho Chi Minh City seems to proceed slowly, which reflects some irrational aspects from drama script, performance art to performance operation. Therefore, it’s high time to review the whole history of drama in Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City to collect experiences for the steady development of drama in this City in the future.


2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 7415-7455 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. P. van Ulden ◽  
G. J. van Oldenborgh

Abstract. The credibility of regional climate change predictions for the 21st century depends on the ability of climate models to simulate global and regional circulations in a realistic manner. To investigate this issue, a large set of global coupled climate model experiments prepared for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been studied. First we compared 20th century model simulations of longterm mean monthly sea level pressure patterns with ERA-40. We found a wide range in performance. Many models performed well on a global scale. For northern midlatitudes and Europe many models showed large errors, while other models simulated realistic pressure fields. Next we focused on the monthly mean climate of West-Central Europe in the 20th century. In this region the climate depends strongly on the circulation. Westerlies bring temperate weather from the Atlantic Ocean, while easterlies bring cold spells in winter and hot weather in summer. In order to be credible for this region, a climate model has to show realistic circulation statistics in the current climate, and a response of temperature and precipitation variations to circulation variations that agrees with observations. We found that even models with a realistic mean pressure pattern over Europe still showed pronounced deviations from the observed circulation distributions. In particular, the frequency distributions of the strength of westerlies appears to be difficult to simulate well. This contributes substantially to biases in simulated temperatures and precipitation, which have to be accounted for when comparing model simulations with observations. Finally we considered changes in climate simulations between the end of the 20th century and the end of the 21st century. Here we found that changes in simulated circulation statistics play an important role in climate scenarios. For temperature, the warm extremes in summer and cold extremes in winter are most sensitive to changes in circulation, because these extremes depend strongly on the simulated frequency of eastery flow. For precipitation, we found that circulation changes have a substantial influence, both on mean changes and on changes in the probability of wet extremes and of long dry spells. Because we do not know how reliable climate models are in their predictions of circulation changes, climate change predictions for Europe are as yet uncertain in many aspects.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 921-940 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Eichinger ◽  
Simone Dietmüller ◽  
Hella Garny ◽  
Petr Šácha ◽  
Thomas Birner ◽  
...  

Abstract. Climate models consistently predict an acceleration of the Brewer–Dobson circulation (BDC) due to climate change in the 21st century. However, the strength of this acceleration varies considerably among individual models, which constitutes a notable source of uncertainty for future climate projections. To shed more light upon the magnitude of this uncertainty and on its causes, we analyse the stratospheric mean age of air (AoA) of 10 climate projection simulations from the Chemistry-Climate Model Initiative phase 1 (CCMI-I), covering the period between 1960 and 2100. In agreement with previous multi-model studies, we find a large model spread in the magnitude of the AoA trend over the simulation period. Differences between future and past AoA are found to be predominantly due to differences in mixing (reduced aging by mixing and recirculation) rather than differences in residual mean transport. We furthermore analyse the mixing efficiency, a measure of the relative strength of mixing for given residual mean transport, which was previously hypothesised to be a model constant. Here, the mixing efficiency is found to vary not only across models, but also over time in all models. Changes in mixing efficiency are shown to be closely related to changes in AoA and quantified to roughly contribute 10 % to the long-term AoA decrease over the 21st century. Additionally, mixing efficiency variations are shown to considerably enhance model spread in AoA changes. To understand these mixing efficiency variations, we also present a consistent dynamical framework based on diffusive closure, which highlights the role of basic state potential vorticity gradients in controlling mixing efficiency and therefore aging by mixing.


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