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El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has a profound influence on the occurrence of extreme precipitation events at local and regional scales in the present-day climate, and thus it is important to understand how that influence may change under future global warming. We consider this question using the large-ensemble simulations of CESM2, which simulates ENSO well historically. CESM2 projects that the influence of ENSO on extreme precipitation will strengthen further under the SSP3–7.0 scenario in most regions whose extreme precipitation regimes are strongly affected by ENSO in the boreal cold season. Extreme precipitation in the boreal cold season that exceeds historical thresholds is projected to become more common throughout the ENSO cycle. The difference in the intensity of extreme precipitation events that occur under El Niño and La Niña conditions will increase, resulting in “more extreme and more variable hydroclimate extremes.” We also consider the processes that affect the future intensity of extreme precipitation and how it varies with the ENSO cycle by partitioning changes into thermodynamic and dynamic components. The thermodynamic component, which reflects increases in atmospheric moisture content, results in a relatively uniform intensification of ENSO-driven extreme precipitation variation. In contrast, the dynamic component, which reflects changes in vertical motion, produces a strong regional difference in the response to forcing. In some regions, this component amplifies the thermodynamic-induced changes, while in others, it offsets them or even results in reduction in extreme precipitation variation.

Study region:
Nechako Reservoir, British Columbia, Canada.

Study focus:
Hydrological regulation affect both hydrological and thermal conditions in the reservoir and downstream reach, subsequently disrupting fish habitats. This paper aims at developing an integrated model simulating physical processes that govern the quantity and quality of inflow, reservoir, and outflow water of the Nechako Reservoir. Such a model would help stakeholders understand the response of in-reservoir water temperature stratification and downstream water temperature to changes in inflow and reservoir operation under future climate change.

New hydrological insights for the region:
The model was calibrated against historical reservoir levels and in-reservoir and outlet water temperature field data. The integrated model simulated accurately the wide variation of reservoir levels as well as the in-reservoir water temperature at Kenney Dam and the outlet temperature. Sensitivity analysis shows that reservoir water temperature particularly the epilimnion is sensitive to changes in both meteorological and hydrological forcing. Forcing the model with different outflow scenarios shows the weak sensitivity of temperature of water released to outflow rates. Given epilimnion water releases at the spillway, the Summer Temperature Management Program could be inefficient to provide cool water in the Nechako River during the critical period of salmon migration in a warming climate. However, colder water remains available at depth at Kenney Dam to potentially mitigate and better control downstream water temperature.

As glaciers across the world continue to recede, there is a concern that their loss as a fresh water reservoir within mountainous basins will have a negative impact on stream temperatures and downstream water resources. Currently, there are relatively few glacio-hydrological models (GHMs) appropriate to study such phenomena and studies that have used GHMs generally acknowledge the high uncertainty associated with their simulations. Calibration techniques present a particular issue in GHMs as available glacier observations are limited and errors in the glacierized portion of a basin can be compensated by errors in the non-glacierized portion. Using as a study site the Cheakamus Basin in British Columbia, Canada, we 1) present a new, fully-coupled GHM, 2) analyze the effects different calibration techniques have on the model’s summer streamflow projections, and 3) compare the fully-coupled GHM results to projections using a one-way GHM. The calibration techniques studied vary in terms of glacier representation (dynamic/static), and glacier constraint (mass balance/thinning rates/thinning rates and area change). We find projected future climate forcings are sufficiently strong in the Cheakamus Basin so as to generally make the sign and significance of changes to the basin’s hydrology insensitive to the calibration and projection procedures studied. However, the variation among these procedures produces significant changes in the projected magnitude of future hydrological changes and therefore should be carefully considered in studies where precision beyond the sign and significance of change is required. Based on analysis of the variation within each procedure’s set of model outputs, we conclude 1) the two-way GHM has benefits over the one-way model, 2) calibration using dynamic glaciers and a thinning rate constraint is preferable for the new GHM, and 3) there is a need for additional studies on the uncertainties associated with the calibration of glacio-hydrological models.

Observations show that summer precipitation in China has undergone pronounced changes, resulting in an enigmatic “north-south drying-wetting” pattern in eastern China that is of great concern for socio-economic development. Scientific consensus on the mechanisms that are responsible for this pattern of change has not yet been achieved. We show that this complex pattern of summer total precipitation trends observed in China since the 1960s is overwhelmingly the result of changes in daily precipitation frequency, rather than being the result of changes in precipitation intensity or the frequency of synoptic circulation patterns favorable to precipitation. Changes in precipitation intensity, which are very likely due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing, contribute a relatively homogeneous wetting tendency across the country while changes due to synoptic circulation change are weak. The changes in daily precipitation frequency that drive the observed patterns of change may be due to aerosols, but improved process understanding will be required to resolve that question and enable reliable projections of regional scale precipitation change in China and elsewhere.

Nocturnal warming events (NWEs) are abrupt interruptions in the typical cooling of surface temperatures at night. Using temperature time series from the high-resolution Vancouver Island School-Based Weather Station Network (VWSN) in British Columbia, Canada, we investigate temporal and spatial characteristics of NWEs. In this coastal region, NWEs are more frequently detected in winter than in summer, with a seasonal shift from slowly warming NWEs dominating the winter months to rapidly warming NWEs dominating the summer months. Slow-warming NWEs are of relatively small amplitude and exhibit slow cooling rates after the temperature peaks. In contrast, fast-warming NWEs have a temperature increase of several kelvins with shorter-duration temperature peaks. The median behavior of these distinct NWE classes at individual stations is similar across the entire set of stations. The spatial synchronicity of NWEs across the VWSN (determined by requiring NWEs at station pairs to occur within given time windows) decreases with distance, including substantial variability at nearby stations that reflects local influences. Fast-warming NWEs are observed to occur either simultaneously across a number of stations or in isolation at one station. Spatial synchronicity values are used to construct undirected networks to investigate spatial connectivity structures of NWEs. We find that, independent of individual seasons or NWE classes, the networks are largely unstructured, with no clear spatial connectivity structures related to local topography or direction.

This report, the second volume in the VIC Generation 2 deployment reports, provides a description of modelling glacier dynamics with the HydroConductor Model.

This, the fifth volume in the VIC Generation 2 deployment reports, provides a description of model calibration.

A strong atmospheric river made landfall in southwestern British Columbia, Canada on November 14th, 2021, bringing two days of intense precipitation to the region. The resulting floods and landslides led to the loss of at least five lives, cut Vancouver off entirely from the rest of Canada by road and rail, and made this the costliest natural disaster in the province's history. Here we show that when characterised in terms of storm-averaged water vapour transport, the variable typically used to characterise the intensity of atmospheric rivers, westerly atmospheric river events of this magnitude are approximately one in ten year events in the current climate of this region, and that such events have been made at least 60% more likely by the effects of human-induced climate change. Characterised in terms of the associated two-day precipitation, the event is substantially more extreme, approximately a one in fifty to one in a hundred year event, and the probability of events at least this large has been increased by a best estimate of 45% by human-induced climate change. The effects of this precipitation on streamflow were exacerbated by already wet conditions preceding the event, and by rising temperatures during the event that led to significant snowmelt, which led to streamflow maxima exceeding estimated one in a hundred year events in several basins in the region. Based on a large ensemble of simulations with a hydrological model which integrates the effects of multiple climatic drivers, we find that the probability of such extreme streamflow events in October to December has been increased by human-induced climate change by a best estimate of 120–330%. Together these results demonstrate the substantial human influence on this compound extreme event, and help motivate efforts to increase resiliency in the face of more frequent events of this kind in the future.

We report on the characteristics of precipitation associated with three types of landfalling atmospheric rivers (ARs) over western North America in the winter season from 1980 to 2004. The ARs are classified according to three landfalling regions as southern, middle and northern types. Two main centers of precipitation are associated with the contributions by the ARs: one over Baja California linked to the southern type of the ARs, and the other over Washington State correlated with the northern and middle types of the ARs. ARs are seen to play a dominant role in the occurrences of extreme precipitation events, with a proportionately greater impact on more extreme events. Moisture flux convergence makes the dominant contribution to precipitation when ARs and extreme precipitation occur simultaneously in the studied areas. Moisture flux convergence in these cases is, in turn, dominated by the mean and transient moisture transported by the transient wind, with greater contribution from the latter, which is mainly concentrated in certain areas. The magnitude and direction of vertically integrated vapor transport (IVT) also play a role in determining the amount of precipitation received in the three regions considered. Larger IVT magnitude corresponds to more precipitation, while an IVT direction of about 220° (0° indicating east wind) is most favorable for high precipitation amount, which is especially obvious for the northern type of the ARs.