Identification

Title

Simulating the impact of global reservoir expansion on the presentâ€�day climate

Abstract

Reservoir expansion over the last century has largely affected downstream flow characteristics. Yet very little is known about the impacts of reservoir expansion on the climate. Here, we implement reservoir construction in the Community Land Model by enabling dynamical lake area changes, while conserving mass and energy. Transient global lake and reservoir extent are prescribed from the HydroLAKES and Global Reservoir and Dam databases. Land-only simulations covering the 20th century with reservoir expansion enabled, highlight increases in terrestrial water storage and decreases in albedo matching the increase in open water area. The comparison of coupled simulations including and excluding reservoirs shows only limited influence of reservoirs on global temperatures and the surface energy balance, but demonstrates substantial responses locally, in particular where reservoirs make up a large fraction of the grid cell. In those locations, reservoirs dampen the diurnal temperature range by up to -1.5 K (for reservoirs covering >15% of the grid cell), reduce temperature extremes, and moderate the seasonal temperature cycle. This study provides a first step towards a coupled representation of reservoirs in Earth System Models.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d73x8b3w

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

2021-08-27T00:00:00Z

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