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• 1. [Article] Sensitivity of Columbia Basin Runoff to Long-Term Changes in Multi-Model CMIP5 Precipitation Simulations

  In this study, we used precipitation elasticity index of streamflow, to reflect on the sensitivity of streamflow to changes in future precipitation. We estimated precipitation elasticity of streamflow ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Sensitivity of Columbia Basin Runoff to Long-Term Changes in Multi-Model CMIP5 Precipitation Simulations Author: Demirel, Mehmet, Moradkhani, Hamid Year: 2014 In this study, we used precipitation elasticity index of streamflow, to reflect on the sensitivity of streamflow to changes in future precipitation. We estimated precipitation elasticity of streamflow from: (1) simulated streamflow by the VIC model using observed precipitation for the current climate (1963–2003); (2) simulated streamflow by the VIC model using simulated precipitation from 10 GCM - CMIP5 dataset for the future climate (2010–2099) including two different pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and two different downscaled products (BCSD and MACA). The hydrological model was calibrated at 1/16 latitude-longitude resolution and the simulated streamflow was routed to the subbasin outlets of interest i.e. Hungry Horse subbasin. We used hydrological model simulations from 19063-2003 and calculated streamflow sensitivities and precipitation elasticity for the same period using observed climate (case 1) and simulated climate (case 2). The runoff sensitivity to long-term (e.g., 30-year) average annual changes in precipitation is calculated based on the elasticity of streamflow for three different 30 year blocks (2010-40, 2040-70 and 2070-99), which are of importance to reservoir management in the Columbia River basin. These two cases and different periods are compared to assess the effects of forcing by different climate models and different pathways on the precipitation elasticity of streamflow. Title: Sensitivity of Columbia Basin Runoff to Long-Term Changes in Multi-Model CMIP5 Precipitation Simulations Author: Demirel, Mehmet, Moradkhani, Hamid Year: 2014 In this study, we used precipitation elasticity index of streamflow, to reflect on the sensitivity of streamflow to changes in future precipitation. We estimated precipitation elasticity of streamflow from: (1) simulated streamflow by the VIC model using observed precipitation for the current climate (1963–2003); (2) simulated streamflow by the VIC model using simulated precipitation from 10 GCM - CMIP5 dataset for the future climate (2010–2099) including two different pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and two different downscaled products (BCSD and MACA). The hydrological model was calibrated at 1/16 latitude-longitude resolution and the simulated streamflow was routed to the subbasin outlets of interest i.e. Hungry Horse subbasin. We used hydrological model simulations from 19063-2003 and calculated streamflow sensitivities and precipitation elasticity for the same period using observed climate (case 1) and simulated climate (case 2). The runoff sensitivity to long-term (e.g., 30-year) average annual changes in precipitation is calculated based on the elasticity of streamflow for three different 30 year blocks (2010-40, 2040-70 and 2070-99), which are of importance to reservoir management in the Columbia River basin. These two cases and different periods are compared to assess the effects of forcing by different climate models and different pathways on the precipitation elasticity of streamflow. Close

• 2. [Article] Assessing the Impact of CMIP5 Climate Multi-Modeling on Estimating the Precipitation Seasonality and Timing

  This paper investigates the effect of a Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) method on simulated precipitation over the Columbia River Basin using two statistically downscaled climate datasets, i.e., Bias-Correction ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Assessing the Impact of CMIP5 Climate Multi-Modeling on Estimating the Precipitation Seasonality and Timing Author: Demirel, Mehmet, Moradkhani, Hamid Year: 2015 This paper investigates the effect of a Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) method on simulated precipitation over the Columbia River Basin using two statistically downscaled climate datasets, i.e., Bias-Correction Spatial Disaggregation (BCSD) and Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs (MACA). To this end daily observed and simulated precipitation are used to calculate different indices focusing solely on seasonality, event-timing, and variability in timing (persistence) of the precipitation. The climate model weights are estimated for each cell (6 × 6 km) of the Columbia River Basin using daily time series for the historical period 1970–1999 from the ten Global Climate Models (GCMs) participating to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project platform, Phase 5. The results show that BMA results in more than 15 % improvement/reduction in mean absolute error as compared to the individual GCMs. The improvement is, in general, higher for the MACA models than for the BCSD models. The results of variability in precipitation timing show that extreme precipitation events are mostly not persistent (i.e., occurring in different periods throughout the year), i.e., more than 75 % of the grid cells with an elevation above 900 m indicate persistence values less than 0.2 whereas nearly 70 % of the high elevation cells indicate such low persistence. Further we find that the variability in persistence is higher in high elevation cells than those with low elevation. The picture is different for MACA ensembles as the simulated persistence of extreme precipitation events is higher than that for the observed and BCSD datasets. Title: Assessing the Impact of CMIP5 Climate Multi-Modeling on Estimating the Precipitation Seasonality and Timing Author: Demirel, Mehmet, Moradkhani, Hamid Year: 2015 This paper investigates the effect of a Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) method on simulated precipitation over the Columbia River Basin using two statistically downscaled climate datasets, i.e., Bias-Correction Spatial Disaggregation (BCSD) and Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs (MACA). To this end daily observed and simulated precipitation are used to calculate different indices focusing solely on seasonality, event-timing, and variability in timing (persistence) of the precipitation. The climate model weights are estimated for each cell (6 × 6 km) of the Columbia River Basin using daily time series for the historical period 1970–1999 from the ten Global Climate Models (GCMs) participating to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project platform, Phase 5. The results show that BMA results in more than 15 % improvement/reduction in mean absolute error as compared to the individual GCMs. The improvement is, in general, higher for the MACA models than for the BCSD models. The results of variability in precipitation timing show that extreme precipitation events are mostly not persistent (i.e., occurring in different periods throughout the year), i.e., more than 75 % of the grid cells with an elevation above 900 m indicate persistence values less than 0.2 whereas nearly 70 % of the high elevation cells indicate such low persistence. Further we find that the variability in persistence is higher in high elevation cells than those with low elevation. The picture is different for MACA ensembles as the simulated persistence of extreme precipitation events is higher than that for the observed and BCSD datasets. Close

• 3. [Article] The Effect of Multi-Model Averaging of Climate Model Outputs on the Seasonality of Rainfall Over the Columbia River Basin

  The rainfall seasonality index is the measure of precipitation distribution throughout the seasonal cycle. The aim of this study is to compare the effect of different multi-model averaging methods on the ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: The Effect of Multi-Model Averaging of Climate Model Outputs on the Seasonality of Rainfall Over the Columbia River Basin Author: Demirel, Mehmet, Rana, Arun, Moradkhani, Hamid Year: 2014 The rainfall seasonality index is the measure of precipitation distribution throughout the seasonal cycle. The aim of this study is to compare the effect of different multi-model averaging methods on the rainfall seasonality index at each 1/16 latitude-longitude cells covering the Columbia River Basin. In accordance with the same, ten different climate model outputs are selected from 45 available climate models from CMIP5 dataset. The reanalysis precipitation data is used to estimate the errors in rainfall seasonality for the climate model outputs. The inverse variance method and statistical multi criteria analysis (SMCA) method were used to estimate the weights for each climate model output. The precipitation amounts from the climate model outputs were then averaged using these model weights. The rainfall seasonality index was estimated from: (1) observed reanalysis data; (2) averaged precipitation amount from ten combinations of CMIP5 outputs for the current climate (1979–2005) using inverse variance method; (3) averaged precipitation amount from the ten combinations of CMIP5 outputs for the current climate using SMCA. The results showed the large differences in rainfall seasonality index for each climate model averaging. Moreover, the multi-modelling of climate models resulted in relative improvements in the performance of the rainfall seasonality over the Columbia River Basin. The estimated model weights for the current climate can be useful to combine the model outputs for the future climate. Title: The Effect of Multi-Model Averaging of Climate Model Outputs on the Seasonality of Rainfall Over the Columbia River Basin Author: Demirel, Mehmet, Rana, Arun, Moradkhani, Hamid Year: 2014 The rainfall seasonality index is the measure of precipitation distribution throughout the seasonal cycle. The aim of this study is to compare the effect of different multi-model averaging methods on the rainfall seasonality index at each 1/16 latitude-longitude cells covering the Columbia River Basin. In accordance with the same, ten different climate model outputs are selected from 45 available climate models from CMIP5 dataset. The reanalysis precipitation data is used to estimate the errors in rainfall seasonality for the climate model outputs. The inverse variance method and statistical multi criteria analysis (SMCA) method were used to estimate the weights for each climate model output. The precipitation amounts from the climate model outputs were then averaged using these model weights. The rainfall seasonality index was estimated from: (1) observed reanalysis data; (2) averaged precipitation amount from ten combinations of CMIP5 outputs for the current climate (1979–2005) using inverse variance method; (3) averaged precipitation amount from the ten combinations of CMIP5 outputs for the current climate using SMCA. The results showed the large differences in rainfall seasonality index for each climate model averaging. Moreover, the multi-modelling of climate models resulted in relative improvements in the performance of the rainfall seasonality over the Columbia River Basin. The estimated model weights for the current climate can be useful to combine the model outputs for the future climate. Close

• 4. [Article] Multi-Criteria Evaluation of CMIP5 GCMs for Climate Change Impact Analysis

  Climate change is expected to have severe impacts on global hydrological cycle along with food-water-energy nexus. Currently, there are many climate models used in predicting important climatic variables. ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Multi-Criteria Evaluation of CMIP5 GCMs for Climate Change Impact Analysis Author: Ahmadalipour, Ali, Rana, Arun, Moradkhani, Hamid, Sharma, Ashish Year: 2015 Climate change is expected to have severe impacts on global hydrological cycle along with food-water-energy nexus. Currently, there are many climate models used in predicting important climatic variables. Though there have been advances in the field, there are still many problems to be resolved related to reliability, uncertainty, and computing needs, among many others. In the present work, we have analyzed performance of 20 different global climate models (GCMs) from Climate Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) dataset over the Columbia River Basin (CRB) in the Pacific Northwest USA. We demonstrate a statistical multicriteria approach, using univariate and multivariate techniques, for selecting suitable GCMs to be used for climate change impact analysis in the region. Univariate methods includes mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, relative change (variability), Mann-Kendall test, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (KS-test); whereas multivariate methods used were principal component analysis (PCA), singular value decomposition (SVD), canonical correlation analysis (CCA), and cluster analysis. The analysis is performed on raw GCM data, i.e., before bias correction, for precipitation and temperature climatic variables for all the 20 models to capture the reliability and nature of the particular model at regional scale. The analysis is based on spatially averaged datasets of GCMs and observation for the period of 1970 to 2000. Ranking is provided to each of the GCMs based on the performance evaluated against gridded observational data on various temporal scales (daily, monthly, and seasonal). Results have provided insight into each of the methods and various statistical properties addressed by them employed in ranking GCMs. Further; evaluation was also performed for raw GCM simulations against different sets of gridded observational dataset in the area. Title: Multi-Criteria Evaluation of CMIP5 GCMs for Climate Change Impact Analysis Author: Ahmadalipour, Ali, Rana, Arun, Moradkhani, Hamid, Sharma, Ashish Year: 2015 Climate change is expected to have severe impacts on global hydrological cycle along with food-water-energy nexus. Currently, there are many climate models used in predicting important climatic variables. Though there have been advances in the field, there are still many problems to be resolved related to reliability, uncertainty, and computing needs, among many others. In the present work, we have analyzed performance of 20 different global climate models (GCMs) from Climate Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) dataset over the Columbia River Basin (CRB) in the Pacific Northwest USA. We demonstrate a statistical multicriteria approach, using univariate and multivariate techniques, for selecting suitable GCMs to be used for climate change impact analysis in the region. Univariate methods includes mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, relative change (variability), Mann-Kendall test, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (KS-test); whereas multivariate methods used were principal component analysis (PCA), singular value decomposition (SVD), canonical correlation analysis (CCA), and cluster analysis. The analysis is performed on raw GCM data, i.e., before bias correction, for precipitation and temperature climatic variables for all the 20 models to capture the reliability and nature of the particular model at regional scale. The analysis is based on spatially averaged datasets of GCMs and observation for the period of 1970 to 2000. Ranking is provided to each of the GCMs based on the performance evaluated against gridded observational data on various temporal scales (daily, monthly, and seasonal). Results have provided insight into each of the methods and various statistical properties addressed by them employed in ranking GCMs. Further; evaluation was also performed for raw GCM simulations against different sets of gridded observational dataset in the area. Close

• 5. [Article] A Regional Bayesian Hierarchical Model for Flood Frequency Analysis

  In this study, we propose a regional Bayesian hierarchical model for flood frequency analysis. The Bayesian method is an alternative to the traditional regional flood frequency analysis. Instead of relying ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: A Regional Bayesian Hierarchical Model for Flood Frequency Analysis Author: Yan, Hongxiang, Moradkhani, Hamid Year: 2015 In this study, we propose a regional Bayesian hierarchical model for flood frequency analysis. The Bayesian method is an alternative to the traditional regional flood frequency analysis. Instead of relying on the delineation of implicit homogeneous regions, the Bayesian hierarchical method describes the spatial dependence in its inner structure. Similar to the classical Bayesian hierarchical model, the process layer of our model presents the spatial variability of the parameters by considering different covariates (e.g., drainage area, elevation, precipitation). Beyond the three classical layers (data, process, and prior) of the Bayesian hierarchical model, we add a new layer referred to as the “L-moments layer”. The L-moments layer uses L-moments theory to select the best-fit probability distribution based on the available data. This new layer can overcome the subjective selection of the distribution based on extreme value theory and determine the distribution from the data instead. By adding this layer, we can combine the merits of regional flood frequency and Bayesian methods. A standard process of covariates selection is also proposed in the Bayesian hierarchical model. The performance of the Bayesian model is assessed by a case study over the Willamette River Basin in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. The uncertainty of different flood percentiles can be quantified from the posterior distributions using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. Temporal changes for the 100-year flood percentiles are also examined using a 20- and 30-year moving window method. The calculated shifts in flood risk can aid future water resources planning and management. Title: A Regional Bayesian Hierarchical Model for Flood Frequency Analysis Author: Yan, Hongxiang, Moradkhani, Hamid Year: 2015 In this study, we propose a regional Bayesian hierarchical model for flood frequency analysis. The Bayesian method is an alternative to the traditional regional flood frequency analysis. Instead of relying on the delineation of implicit homogeneous regions, the Bayesian hierarchical method describes the spatial dependence in its inner structure. Similar to the classical Bayesian hierarchical model, the process layer of our model presents the spatial variability of the parameters by considering different covariates (e.g., drainage area, elevation, precipitation). Beyond the three classical layers (data, process, and prior) of the Bayesian hierarchical model, we add a new layer referred to as the “L-moments layer”. The L-moments layer uses L-moments theory to select the best-fit probability distribution based on the available data. This new layer can overcome the subjective selection of the distribution based on extreme value theory and determine the distribution from the data instead. By adding this layer, we can combine the merits of regional flood frequency and Bayesian methods. A standard process of covariates selection is also proposed in the Bayesian hierarchical model. The performance of the Bayesian model is assessed by a case study over the Willamette River Basin in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. The uncertainty of different flood percentiles can be quantified from the posterior distributions using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. Temporal changes for the 100-year flood percentiles are also examined using a 20- and 30-year moving window method. The calculated shifts in flood risk can aid future water resources planning and management. Close