Journal article
Bias in streamflow projections due to climate-induced shifts in catchment response
M Saft, MC Peel, AW Western, JM Perraud, L Zhang
Geophysical Research Letters | Published : 2016
DOI: 10.1002/2015GL067326
Abstract
Demand for quantitative assessments of likely climate change impact on runoff is increasing and conceptual rainfall-runoff models are essential tools for this task. However, the capacity of these models to extrapolate under changing climatic conditions is questionable. A number of studies have found that model predictive skill decreases with changed climatic conditions, especially when predicting drier climates. We found that model skill only declines under certain circumstances, in particular, when a catchment's rainfall-runoff processes change due to changed climatic drivers. In catchments where the rainfall-runoff relationship changed significantly in response to prolonged dry conditions,..
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Grants
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
The research project was funded by the CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country National Research Flagship. Murray Peel is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT120100130). We thank Jai Vaze for providing streamflow data and Fangfang Zhao for sharing rainfall data. Source rainfall and PET data were extracted from SILO database (https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/silo/). Streamflow data are publicly available from the relevant government state agencies online. Hydrologic models were coded in C# as part of the CSIRO "Catchment Water Yield Estimation Tool" project.