A Whittaker‐Biome based framework to account for the impact of climate change on catchment behavior

Deshmukh, Ankit and Singh, Riddhi (2019) A Whittaker‐Biome based framework to account for the impact of climate change on catchment behavior. Water Resources Research. ISSN 0043-1397 (In Press)

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Abstract

Rainfall‐runoff models are often used to simulate the impact of long‐term climate change on future water availability. A common assumption in most modeling frameworks is that catchment's hydrologically relevant characteristics, represented via model parameters, remain constant. However, several studies present evidence on the contrary and suggest potential biases in estimates of future streamflow due to this assumption. Regardless, there is a lack of modeling frameworks that account for the possible impact of climate on catchment's characteristics. To change model parameters with climate, we propose a method based on the Whittaker biome plot that relates biome type to the climatic setting of a catchment. We compare estimates of catchment's vulnerability to climate change obtained from fixed and changing parameters. Our analysis spanning 83 catchments across the conterminous United States, shows that considering changes in catchment's representative parameters with climate significantly alters the estimated vulnerability to climate change for a majority of catchments.

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