The Characteristics Of Extreme Maximum Runoff Of The Rivers Of Armenia In The Context Of Global Climate Change

Abstract

The study concerned the analysis of temporal and spatial variability of floods in the Republic of Armenia (RA). While there are number of reports on flood formation of rivers in RA, the literature lacks results on using nonparametric test results to analyze this disastrous phenomenon. For that purpose, the dynamics of changes in extreme maximum instantaneous runoff, as well as air temperature and precipitation database was evaluated and compared between 1960–2012 for 27 hydrometrical observational and 35 meteorological stations in RA. The Mann-Kendall test with consideration of the autocorrelation function was employed as a non-parametric testto identify any present trends. An increasing tendency of air temperature, decreasing tendency of the atmospheric precipitation and extreme maximum instantaneous river runoff were identified in the studied river-basins. As expected, the warming climate contributed to a gradual melting of accumulated snow in the river-basins in winter, resulting in changes in the extreme maximum instantaneous runoff of the rivers in spring, which significantly reduces the risk of the flood occurrence. Thus, it can be claimed that almost all the river basins of Armenia have a tendency to reduce the risk of floods due to global climate change.

Keywords

• maximum runoff
• climate change
• precipitation
• variability
• trend
• flooding risk