Simulation of Climate Change on river hydrograph Using WetSpa Model, Case Study: Taleghan Watershed Alborz Province

Abstract

Introduction: One of the major issues in hydrology engineering is the prediction of the flood routing or rising and falling limb river hydrograph, in which the importance of the climate is very evident due to the high volatility and is therefore one of the most important factors to be carefully studied. Climate has been changing ever since. Changes refer to the variability of the long term trends in the state of the climate or average changes in temperature and rainfall that persist for extended period. Important regional water resource vulnerabilities to changes in both temperature and precipitation patterns are documented. Recent analysis from the inter-governmental panel for climate change indicates that the earth as a whole has warmed by about 0.6°C ± 0.2°C over the past century with locally and seasonally varying amounts. The changes in pattern and intensity of precipitation, melting of ice, increasing atmospheric water vapor and others has a significant natural variability on inter annual to decadal that masking the long term trend. Increased evaporation, combined with changes in precipitation characteristics, has the potential to affect runoff, frequency and intensity of floods and droughts, soil moisture, and water supply. Warming of climate system and change in its state variables are highly related to the atmosphere-land-ocean system. The climate modeling science integrates these complex systems with the Global Circulation Models (GCMs) to simulate future climate changes and forecast it for decades and centuries. Climate change scenarios developed from General Circulation Models (GCMs) are the initial source of information for estimating plausible future climate changes. In regional and local climate studies usually coarse-resolution outputs of global climate models are downscaled to produce necessary fine scale data. Statistical downscaling methods are widely used for prediction of climatic variables e.g. precipitation because of importance of these factors in environmental planning and management. The main purpose of the research is to investigate the past and future potential of climate change and its impacts on the hydrologic response of the basin.

Data and method of work: In this study, the Taleghan Watershed of the Sefidrood basin was selected as a case study due to its socio-economic significance. Elevation range from 1774 to 4362 m and a mean slope is 40.5%. The mean annual precipitation in the catchment is 591 mm. At first using weather data and meteorological data with a daily step in a 21-year period and three base maps information, including precipitation data from eight stations, temperature and evaporation data from two stations were used as input to the model. Three base maps information i.e. DEM, land use and soil types are prepared in GIS and flow hydrograph was simulated using WetSpa model in Taleghan watershed. For runoff verification, the only river station at the outlet of the catchment was used. Then, for the reference period, daily modeled runoff was compared with observed values at available in the region. In the following Future climate change (precipitation, temperature and evaporation) based on CanESM2 model from the fifth report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on emission scenario RCP8.5 was used for simulating the flow hydrograph during the next period (2016-2029) and its comparison with the base period (1995-2015). In this study, the performance of Statistical Downscaling Model (SDSM) was investigated to predict precipitation, temperature and evaporation. Modeled precipitation was compared with observations of 8 available stations in the region, Observed temperatures from two stations were also used for modeled temperature and evaporation verification.

Interpretation of results: Regarding to the outputs and spatially distributed hydrological factors in daily time step the model is capable to analyze topography, soil type, and land use effects on the hydrological behavior of the watershed. Model evaluation results showed that The Nash-Sutcliffe criteria, 76% and accuracy of the simulation show the high performance of the model in this watershed. The results of the research showed that the SDSM model is well advanced to simulate Climate variables. Statistical measures of model performance such as Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Mean squared error (MSE) and the analysis of output results from SDSM model shown that this model is able to predict precipitation, temperature and evaporation indexes. According to the results of the CanESM2 model, in the considered scenario (RCP8.5), temperature will increase from 0.5 to 0.6 and Average precipitation in the future 8% will increase. Finally the results showed that in the considered scenario, the average runoff watershed will increase Up to 45% by the climate in the future. Also, the average of runoff will increase in all months of the year (except in October) compared to the base period. This increase is more pronounced for April.

Keywords: Emission Scenario, Flood, Hydrologic Model, River Hydrograph, Simulation









































* Corresponding author: najafinejad@gau.ac.ir