Author(s): Yoshinobu Sato; Yuri Michihiro; Yasushi Suzuki; Kenji Tanaka; Eiichi Nakakita
Linked Author(s): Yoshinobu Sato
Keywords: Climate change; DHM; GCM; Multi-model/scenario analysis; Reservoir operation
Abstract: In order to clarify the impact of climate change on river water management, a distributed hydrological model (DHM) simulation based on the GCM outputs through multi-model and multiscenario analysis was conducted. The hydrological model used in this study was developed as the Hydrological river Basin Environment Assessment Model (Hydro-BEAM) and which was applied for the Kiso River basin located in the central part of Japan. To provide more useful information of adaptation strategy for the policy makers or river managers, the influence of anthropogenic factors (i.e. reservoir operations and water withdrawal from river channel) were also considered in the model. The results obtained in this study indicated that the available water resources calculated by the water supply (net rainfall plus snowmelt) minus evaporation loss is the most important factor for predicting the change of future river runoffs. The amount of water stored in the major reservoirs will be decrease with the temperature rise due to the increase of evaporation, because the influence of the water supply was not significant in the region. Therefore, long-term heat and water balance analysis and the multimodel and multi-scenario analysis is necessary to clarify the hydrological impact of climate change and to reduce uncertainties in the future climate projection.
Year: 2012