HR: 1340h
AN: GC33B-1258    [Abstracts]
TI: Space-Time Modeling of Climate Change Effects on the Water Balance of Southwestern Alberta
AU: Mutulu, P
EM: pmmutulu@ucalgary.ca
AF: Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 Canada
AU: * Blais, J
EM: blais@ucalgary.ca
AF: Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 Canada
AU: * Blais, J
EM: blais@ucalgary.ca
AF: Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 Canada
AB: Changes and variabilities in space and time characteristics of hydro-climatic processes play a major role in the water balance of a watershed. Formulating suitable spatio-temporal models for interactive behavior of such processes is crucial in understanding and investigating potential climate change effects on hydrology of a watershed. Historical climatic and hydrologic data are herein used to calibrate a conceptual stochastic monthly water balance for southwestern Alberta watersheds in Canada for the present day climate. The inputs to the model are monthly precipitation, evapotranspiration and temperature time series and the outputs are monthly soil moisture storages and streamflow. To account for vegetation influence on the precipitation-runoff transformation, a moisture index parameter based on the Jansen-Haise formulation and HDF-EOS data is incorporated into the hydrologic model. An adaptive technique is used to describe time evolution and uncertainties in the moisture index parameter. To simulate the effects of global warming due to the doubling of CO₂, outputs from the Canadian Global Coupled Model 1 (CGCM1) are used to provide inputs that are downscaled to drive the hydrologic model. Spatial estimation of unknown data are performed using a modified Kriging approach combined with Canonical Correlation analysis. Preliminary results indicate that the formulated model is statistically adequate for estimating monthly streamflow at the 95% level. It is also shown that a temperature based approach can be used to estimate the evapotranspiration time series as an immediate process when data for the latter are either unavailable or insufficient. This result is attractive in the sense that only temperature and precipitation are needed to drive the hydrologic model. Finally, the sensitivity of moisture index and streamflow to potential climate changes is briefly discussed.
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
DE: 1637 Regional climate change
DE: 1805 Computational hydrology
DE: 1816 Estimation and forecasting
DE: 1846 Model calibration (3333)
SC: Global Climate Change [GC]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005