Abstract
This manuscript presents the assessment of climate change impacts on the streamflow at the Mangueira lake watershed, located in Southern Brazil, based on precipitation predictions of twenty Atmospheric/Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) that feed a hydrologic model named IPH II. The projections were based on two emission scenarios of the IPCC that set the forcing conditions for the AOGCMs to estimate future climate: A2, characterized by higher emissions and B2, characterized by lower emissions. The MAGICC/ScenGen was used to obtain the projected monthly anomalies of precipitation for the scenarios A2/B2 at two future time intervals centered at 2030 and 2070. Time series of projected precipitation were estimated using the delta change approach. The results in terms of average annual flow shows that mean value of the anomalies on the near horizon resulted very similar, equal to +2.86%(A2) and +2.48%(B2). This statistic increased on the long horizon, with a mean value of the anomalies of +16.94%(A2) and +11.83%(B2). The dispersion among results of the AOGCMs showed anomalies that may reach [+10%,−7%] in the near future and [+30%,−20%], in the long horizon. Thus, although there was higher agreement between AOGCMs in increasing flows, it is important to highlight the dispersion of results.
Keywords:
climate change; streamflow projections; Mangueira lake
