Identification

Title

Impacts of global warming of 1.5, 2.0 and 3.0°C on hydrologic regimes in the Northeastern U.S.

Abstract

Regional climate change impacts show a wide range of variations under different levels of global warming. Watersheds in the northeastern region of the United States (NEUS) are projected to undergo the most severe impacts from climate change in the forms of extreme precipitation events, floods and drought, sea level rise, etc. As such, there is high possibility that hydrologic regimes in the NEUS may be altered in the future, which can be absolutely devastating for managing water resources and ecological balance across different watersheds. In this study, we present a comprehensive impact analysis using different hydrologic indicators across selected watersheds in the NEUS under different thresholds of global temperature increases (1.5, 2.0 and 3.0 째C). Precipitation and temperature projections from fourteen downscaled Global Circulation Models (GCMs) under the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 greenhouse gas concentration pathway are used as inputs into a distributed hydrological model to obtain future streamflow conditions. Overall, the results indicate that the majority of the selected watersheds will enter a wetter regime, particularly during the months of winter, while flow conditions during late summer and fall indicate a dry future under all three thresholds of temperature increase. The estimation of time of emergence of new hydrological regimes show large uncertainties under 1.5 and 2.0 째C global temperature increases; however, most of the GCM projections show a strong consensus that new hydrological regimes may appear in the NEUS watersheds under 3.0 째C temperature increase.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7nz8c08

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

2021-01-07T00:00:00Z

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