Identification

Title

Increasing Alaskan river discharge during the cold season is driven by recent warming

Abstract

Arctic hydrology is experiencing rapid changes including earlier snow melt, permafrost degradation, increasing active layer depth, and reduced river ice, all of which are expected to lead to changes in stream flow regimes. Recently, long-term (>60 years) climate reanalysis and river discharge observation data have become available. We utilized these data to assess long-term changes in discharge and their hydroclimatic drivers. River discharge during the cold season (October-April) increased by 10% per decade. The most widespread discharge increase occurred in April (15% per decade), the month of ice break-up for the majority of basins. In October, when river ice formation generally begins, average monthly discharge increased by 7% per decade. Long-term air temperature increases in October and April increased the number of days above freezing (+1.1 d per decade) resulting in increased snow ablation (20% per decade) and decreased snow water equivalent (-12% per decade). Compared to the historical period (1960-1989), mean April and October air temperature in the recent period (1990-2019) have greater correlation with monthly discharge from 0.33 to 0.68 and 0.0-0.48, respectively. This indicates that the recent increases in air temperature are directly related to these discharge changes. Ubiquitous increases in cold and shoulder-season discharge demonstrate the scale at which hydrologic and biogeochemical fluxes are being altered in the Arctic.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7gq72p5

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-02-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact