54 / 60
Page 89
Notes:
conferenceseries
.com
Volume 8, Issue 10 (Suppl)
J Earth Sci Clim Change, an open access
ISSN: 2157-7617
Climate Change 2017
October 19-21, 2017
CLIMATE CHANGE
October 19-21, 2017 | Rome, Italy
4
th
World Conference on
Selecting GCM scenarios for climate change impact assessment
Babak Farjad
1
and
Anil Gupta
2
1
University of Calgary, Canada
2
Alberta Environment and Parks, Calgary, Canada
Statement of the Problem
: One of the main challenges in climate change impact assessment studies is selecting suitable
climate change scenarios to be used in a regional environmental modelling system. Using all available Global Circulation
Model (GCM) scenarios would be one way to build the complete picture of the range of climate change and variability but may
not always be feasible for such studies. On the other hand, there is no recommended standard number of GCM scenarios to use
while the number of GCMs is increasing at a rapid pace. This can be a more challenging case when it comes to understanding
responses of hydrological regimes to climate change. This is because first using many GCMs to a hydrological model to simulate
the hydrological responses is computationally intensive. Second, even though some selected extreme climate change scenarios
may appear to be useful, the non-linearity in the impact response can lead to quite different results.
Purpose
: The purpose of this study is to shed some light on this issue, this study was undertaken to develop a methodology for
selecting representative climate change scenarios that capture all plausible future climate variability affecting the hydrological
response of a watershed.
Methodology
: The study employs three different methods; fuzzy clustering, k-means clustering, and change factors (CFs) to
select climate change scenarios out of a combination of 33 GCM scenarios from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project,
phase 5 (CMIP5) in the Muskeg watershed in Alberta, Canada. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was calibrated
and validated to simulate streamflow under the selected GCM scenarios for the period of 2046-2065 relative to the baseline of
1986-2005 in the watershed. Flow duration curves (FDCs) were constructed to represent peak, mid-range average flow, and
low daily flows, for each climate scenario.
Findings
: Results revealed that the fuzzy clustering-based method performed well compared to the k-means clustering and
change factors (CFs) methods.
Conclusion & Significance
: This study gives clear guidance on how to reduce the number of climate change scenarios based on
selecting representative scenarios that capture all plausible future variability affecting the hydrological response. However, the
most appropriate climate scenarios for a region will not necessarily be the most appropriate for another region due to different
climate and geomorphological characteristics.
Biography
Babak Farjad is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary. His work involves developing a hydrological modelling system to evaluate and predict
the impacts of climate change and human activities on hydrology of the Lower Athabasca River basin in Alberta, Canada. His PhD research was on developing a
modeling framework to investigate the impact of climate and land-use/cover change on hydrological processes in the Elbow River watershed in southern Alberta,
Canada.
bfarjad@ucalgary.caBabak Farjad et al., J Earth Sci Clim Change 2017, 8:10(Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2157-7617-C1-036