Assessment of the shift in the precipitation-streamflow relationship influenced by multiyear drought, Yellow River basin, China

Qiang Liu; Liqiao Liang; Tao Sun; Xuan Wang; Chunhui Li; Sirui Yan

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166203

Assessment of the shift in the precipitation-streamflow relationship influenced by multiyear drought, Yellow River basin, China

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Dec 10:903:166203. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166203. Epub 2023 Aug 13.

Authors

Qiang Liu¹, Liqiao Liang², Tao Sun³, Xuan Wang³, Chunhui Li³, Sirui Yan³

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Key Laboratory for Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: qiang.liu@bnu.edu.cn.
² State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Environment and Resources (TPESER), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. Electronic address: liangliqiao@itpcas.ac.cn.
³ State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Key Laboratory for Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.

PMID: 37582440
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166203

Abstract

Climate change intensification (e.g., long-term drought) dramatically triggers catchment property changes, which introduces larger uncertainties for describing catchment hydrological behavior. In this study, hydrological behavior responses to multiyear drought were explored, and then causes were explained. The hydrological response to multiyear drought was explored using a magnitude of shift (M) in describing the relationship between precipitation (P) and streamflow (Q) in different catchment states, and a novel method, the trigonometric function decomposition method within the Budyko framework (the TFD method), was applied to assess the causes of Q changes. Several conclusions can be drawn: (i) multiyear drought mainly caused insignificant and significant upward (p < 0.05) changes in the P-Q relationship among 95.45 % of the studied catchments (p < 0.05); (ii) more server drying, lower leaf area index (LAI) and slope can induce a higher M via multiyear drought. In particular, catchment water storage, indicated by the deep soil layer in the Loess Plateau, can effectively mitigate the Q reduction and resulted in a 77.27 % (17/22) upward shift compared with the expected Q reduction; (iii) an asymmetric effect was caused by a multiyear P deficit, that is, (P-Q)/P increase and catchment property parameter (n) decrease were induced by the increases in ratio between potential evapotranspiration and P (E_p/P), suggesting that the catchment properties can mitigate the Q reduction; and (iv) catchment properties had negative effects on the Q reduction (7.76 mm a^-1), and partially offset Q reduction (-21.32 mm a^-1) resulted from climate change during the multiyear drought period. All of these results indicated that multiyear drought triggered Q reduction, while catchment behavior in the changeable induction mechanism induced a nonlinear Q response to P reduction, which is important for accurate Q projections and appropriate adaptation strategies for droughts.

Keywords: Budyko framework; Catchment properties; Climate change; Drought; Precipitation deficit.