| Title |
An Analysis of the Effect of Climate Change on Nakdong River Environmental Flow |
| Authors |
이아연 ( A Yeon Lee ) ; 김상단 ( Sang Dan Kim ) |
| Keywords |
Climate change; Environmental flow; Flow duration curves; Tank model |
| Abstract |
This study describes the modeling of climate change impact on runoff across southeast Korea using a conceptual rainfall-runoff model TANK and assesses the results using the concept of environmental flows developed by International Water Management Institute. The future climate time series is obtained by scaling the historical series, informed by 4 global climate models and 3 greenhouse gas emission scenarios, to reflect a 4.0˚C increase at most in average surface air temperature and 31.7% increase at most in annual precipitation, using the spatio-temporal changing factor method that considers changes in the future mean seasonal rainfall and potential evapotranspiration as well as in the daily rainfall distribution. Although the simulation results from different global circulation models and greenhouse emission scenarios indicate different responses in flows to the climate change, the majority of the modeling results show that there will be more runoff in southeast Korea in the future. However, there is substantial uncertainty, with the results ranging from a 5.82% decrease to a 48.15% increase in the mean annual runoff averaged across the study area according to the corresponding climate change scenarios. We then assess the hydrologic perturbations based on the comparison between present and future flow duration curves suggested by IMWI. As a result, the effect of hydrologic perturbation on aquatic ecosystems may be significant at several locations of the Nakdong river main stream in dry season. |