As the climate around the world warms, seasonal peak river flows are likely to decline.
New Delhi:
Across the Northern Hemisphere, declining snowfall is affecting seasonal river flows, increasing the risk of summer droughts, new research finds.
The researchers explained that this could threaten water and food security, ecosystems and hydroelectric power production.
The team, led by researchers from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, discovered that as the planet warms, snowy regions of the North American Rockies and European Alps, along with northern Europe, thaw. prematurely.
Additionally, seasonal flows in areas with less snow are delayed as winters become drier and warm-season rains arrive later in the year, becoming a more dominant source of river flow, they explained.
“Increased (year-to-year) variability in flow seasonality implies greater uncertainty in seasonal flow patterns, posing challenges for water resources planning and management,” said Ross Woods, from the University of Bristol and lead author of the study published in magazine. Nature.
“Water managers need different strategies to adapt to this depending on their location. Future water infrastructure planning will need to take these changes in seasonal river flow into account,” Woods said.
For the study, researchers analyzed climate and river flow data from 1950 to 2020 for more than 3,000 river basins across the Northern Hemisphere. For each year, they calculated the amount of precipitation that fell as snow, how that amount changed over time, along with its timing in each season, and the flow of rivers.
The team then compared these values with those observed during two ten-year periods – one with the highest amount of snow and one with the lowest amount of snow.
As the climate around the world warms, seasonal peaks in river flow are likely to decrease, resulting in more uniform river flow throughout the year, researchers said.
The timing and seasonal changes of river flows have shown greater changes year over year as snowfall declines, meaning planning for these changes in the future is essential, Woods said.
Changing trends in seasonal river flows affect the availability of water resources and have “far-reaching implications for ecosystem functioning, food security and the management of natural hazards,” Woods said.
Previous studies have shown that with climate change, snowfall is decreasing, snowpacks are changing and river flows resulting from melting ice are also changing.
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