International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—The impact of future climate change on the streamflows for the upper reaches of Yangtze River, China, has been investigated with the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model. VIC model was applied to the upper reaches of Yangtze River with the calibration period of 1962-1990, and validation period of 1991-2010.Then the future climate change scenarios derived from five general circulation models (GCMs) under scenario Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5) were projected to the calibrated VIC model to study the hydrological processes. Results demonstrated that the VIC model can satisfactorily simulate the rainfall-runoff processes. The results showed that the projected streamflow decreased slightly in January to June but increased significantly from August to October. The coefficient of variation (CV) under projected climate increased in summer and annual, decreased in winter.

Index Terms—VIC model, GCMs, climate change on runoff.

Changqing Meng, Minglong Dai, and Minglong Dai are with the School of Hydropower and Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China (e-mail: D201377808@hust.edu.cn, D201377811@hust.edu.cn, 2736325098@qq.com).
Jianzhong Zhou is with the School of Hydropower and Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China. He is also with HuBei Key Laboratory of Digital Valley Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China (e-mail: jz.zhou@hust.edu.cn).

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Cite: Changqing Meng, Jianzhong Zhou, Minglong Dai, and Wei Li, "An Evaluation of the Impact of Climate Change on Runoff in the Upper Reaches of Yangtze River, China," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 417-420, 2017.