Effects of climate change on terrestrial water storage and basin discharge in the lancang River Basin

Abstract

Study Region: Lancang River Basin (upper reaches of the Mekong River basin within China). Study Focus: Complex terranes and diverse climates are a bottleneck for understanding the hydrology of rivers originating from the Tibetan Plateau. This study deals with the impact of climate change on water storage in the Lancang River Basin, which is governed by the South Asian monsoon system. We evaluated the spatiotemporal distribution of multi-source precipitation, evapotranspiration, and terrestrial water storage (TWS) to understand the hydrological system in the region. We provide evidence of climate change impacts on TWS and basin discharge over an upstream region of the transboundary river system. New Hydrological Insights for the Region: The Five Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) products and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) TWS display analogous seasonal distribution, even though the amounts differ between them. The GRACE and GLDAS TWS exhibited a significant negative trend in the basin from 2002 to 2016. However, the Center for Space Research (CSR-M) at the University of Texas and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL-M) mascon solutions concede more severe and much wider TWS reduction than the three spherical harmonic (SH) solutions. In addition, a downward trend was observed for basin discharge over 15 years as a response to climate change (decreased precipitation and increased evapotranspiration). Furthermore, we identified a 2-month time lag between precipitation and TWS, which could be a response to climatic factors along with aquifer properties in a karst dominated region.

Keywords

• Climate change
• TWS
• River discharge hydrology
• Lancang River Basin