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).
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.
