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Change of flow

Anthropogenic influence on climate has changed temperatures, precipitation, atmospheric circulation, and many other related physical processes, but has it changed river flow as well? Gudmundsson et al. analyzed thousands of time series of river flows and hydrological extremes across the globe and compared them with model simulations of the terrestrial water cycle (see the Perspective by Hall and Perdigão). They found that the observed trends can only be explained if the effects of climate change are included. Their analysis shows that human influence on climate has affected the magnitude of low, mean, and high river flows on a global scale.
Science, this issue p. 1159; see also p. 1096

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change is expected to affect global river flow. Here, we analyze time series of low, mean, and high river flows from 7250 observatories around the world covering the years 1971 to 2010. We identify spatially complex trend patterns, where some regions are drying and others are wetting consistently across low, mean, and high flows. Trends computed from state-of-the-art model simulations are consistent with the observations only if radiative forcing that accounts for anthropogenic climate change is considered. Simulated effects of water and land management do not suffice to reproduce the observed trend pattern. Thus, the analysis provides clear evidence for the role of externally forced climate change as a causal driver of recent trends in mean and extreme river flow at the global scale.
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Supplementary Material

Summary

Materials and Methods
Figs. S1 to S12
Tables S1 to S7
References (3644)

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Published In

Science
Volume 371 | Issue 6534
12 March 2021

Submission history

Received: 29 November 2019
Accepted: 25 January 2021
Published in print: 12 March 2021

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Acknowledgments

Funding: We acknowledge financial support as follows: L.G. and S.I.S. were supported through the H2020 projects CRESCENDO (grant no. 641816) and 4C (grant no. 821003). S.I.S. acknowledges support from the European Research Council through the ERC DROUGHT-HEAT project (grant no. FP7-IDEAS-ERC-617518). H.M.S. is supported in part by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, grant no. 01LS1711F). H.X.D. is supported by the University of Michigan (grant no. U064474). W.T. acknowledges support from the Uniscientia Foundation and the ETH Zurich Foundation (grant no. Fel-45 15-1). J.L. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 41625001 and 41571022) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. XDA20060402). J.B. acknowledges support from MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI (grant no. 16H06291) and the Environmental Research and Technology Development Fund (grant no. 2RF-1802). Y.P. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation (grant no. 1752729). Y.S. was supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models) (grant no. JPMXD0717935715). M.G.G. received support from the Greek State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) (grant no. MIS5033021). Author contributions: L.G. conceptualized the study, conducted the data analysis, and drafted the paper with contributions from all co-authors. H.M.S., J.B., W.T., and Y.S. conducted model simulations contributing to the ISIMIP ensembles. S.N.G. and H.M.S. coordinated the ISIMIP model simulations. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Data and materials availability: Observed river flow indices can be downloaded from PANGAEA (35). The model-based data are freely available through the ISIMIP project [ISIMIP2a: available through GFZ Data Services (30); ISIMIP2b: available at https://esgf-data.dkrz.de/projects/esgf-dkrz/].

Authors

Affiliations

Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland.
National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Tsukuba, Japan.
School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, Nong Lam University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Rethymno 74100, Greece.
Aristeidis G. Koutroulis https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2999-7575
School of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece.
School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen 518055, China.
Institute of Physical Geography, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Senckenberg Leibniz Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F), Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK.
Mott MacDonald Ltd, Cambridge, UK.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland.
National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Tsukuba, Japan.
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland.
Department of Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium.
Seth Westra
School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
Environment Canada, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Fang Zhao
Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science (Ministry of Education), School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, Germany.

Funding Information

H2020 Societal Challenges: 641816 (CRESCENDO)
H2020 Societal Challenges: 641816 (CRESCENDO)
Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences: XDA20060402
Uniscientia Foundation:
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF): 01LS1711F
Greek State Scholarship Foundation (IKY): MIS5033021
MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI: 16H06291
Environmental Research and Technology Development Fund: 2RF-1802

Notes

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

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