Historical temporal trends of hydro-climatic variables and runoff response to climate variability and their relevance in water resource management in the Hanjiang basin

Trends analysis; Mann–Kendall; Climate variability; Water balance model; Danjiangkou reservoir; South-to-North Water Diversion Project Summary The Danjiangkou reservoir lies in the upper Hanjiang basin and is the source of water for the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP) in China. Any significant change in the magnitude or timing of runoff from the Danjiangkou reservoir induced by changes in climatic variables would have significant implications for the economic prosperity of the area in the Hanjiang basin as well as for the South-to-North Water Diversion Project. In this paper the following issues are investigated: (1) Temporal trends of annual and seasonal precipitation and temperature from 1951 to 2003 in the Hanjiang basin are analyzed using the Mann–Kendall and the linear regression methods; spatial distributions of precipitation and temperature are interpolated by the inverse distance weighted interpolation method. (2) Temporal trends of runoff, precipitation and temperature from 1951 to 2003 in the Danjiangkou reservoir, an upper stream basin of the Hanjiang River, are further tested. (3) To assess the impact of climate change on water resources and predict the future runoff change in the Danjiangkou reservoir basin, a two-parameter water balance model is used to simulate the hydrological response for the climate change predicted by GCMs for the region for the period of 2021–2050.

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