A simple methodology for estimating mean and variability of annual runoff and reservoir yield under present and future climates

TA McMahon; MC Peel; GGS Pegram; IN Smith

Journal article

A simple methodology for estimating mean and variability of annual runoff and reservoir yield under present and future climates

TA McMahon, MC Peel, GGS Pegram, IN Smith

Journal of Hydrometeorology | Published : 2011

DOI: 10.1175/2010JHM1288.1

Abstract

Overlying the challenge of managing within natural hydroclimatic variability is the likely modification of runoff variability along with average runoff due to anthropogenic enhancement of greenhouse gas concentrations. In this paper analytical models are developed in which runoff mean and variability, the latter defined by the variance (or standard deviation) of annual runoff, are related to the variances and the covariance of annual precipitation and potential evapotranspiration, and the aridity index (mean annual potential evapotranspiration divided by mean annual precipitation). The method was validated using observed runoff data for 699 worldwide catchments. It was concluded that combini..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Thomas McMahon Author

Murray Peel Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the Australian Research Council Grants DP0773016 and LP100100756, and a CSIRO Flagship Collaborative Research Fund grant. Professor Richard Vogel of Tufts University and Dr. Vivek Arora of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis provided helpful advice. We acknowledge the modeling groups, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI), and the WCRP's Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM), for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multimodel dataset. Support of this dataset is provided by the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy.