Analysis of hydrological extremes at different hydro-climatic regimes under present and future conditions

Abstract

We investigate simulated hydrological extremes (i.e., high and low flows) under the present and future climatic conditions for five river basins worldwide: the Ganges, Lena, Niger, Rhine, and Tagus. Future projections are based on five GCMs and four emission scenarios. We analyse results from the HYPE, mHM, SWIM, VIC and WaterGAP3 hydrological models calibrated and validated to simulate each river. The use of different impact models and future projections allows for an assessment of the uncertainty of future impacts. The analysis of extremes is conducted for four different time horizons: reference (1981–2010), early-century (2006–2035), mid-century (2036–2065) and end-century (2070–2099). In addition, Sen’s non-parametric estimator of slope is used to calculate the magnitude of trend in extremes, whose statistical significance is assessed by the Mann–Kendall test. Overall, the impact of climate change is more severe at the end of the century and particularly in dry regions. High flows are generally sensitive to changes in precipitation, however sensitivity varies between the basins. Finally, results show that conclusions in climate change impact studies can be highly influenced by uncertainty both in the climate and impact models, whilst the sensitivity to climate modelling uncertainty becoming greater than hydrological model uncertainty in the dry regions.