Collignan et al. (2023) Budyko Framework Based Analysis of the Effect of Climate Change on Watershed Evaporation Efficiency and Its Impact on Discharge Over Europe

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Water Resources Research
• Year: 2023
• Authors: Julie Collignan, Jan Polcher‬, Sophie Bastin, Pere Quintana Seguí
• DOI: 10.1029/2023wr034509

Research Groups

Not explicitly detailed in the abstract.

Short Summary

This study proposes a methodology combining the Budyko framework with Land Surface Model (LSM) outputs across 2,134 European watersheds (1902–2010) to separate the effects of changes in climate means versus intra-annual distribution on discharge, finding that annual precipitation trends generally dominate, except in the Mediterranean where intra-annual precipitation variability is more critical than potential evapotranspiration (PET) trends.

Objective

• To propose and apply a methodology combining the Budyko framework and Land Surface Model (LSM) outputs to decompose and quantify the effects of changes in climate variable annual means versus intra-annual distributions on river discharge across Europe.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: 2,134 reconstructed watersheds across Europe.
• Temporal Scale: 109 years (1902 to 2010).

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Land Surface Model (LSM); Budyko framework (one-parameter approximation, modified with a varying parameter to account for intra-annual distribution effects).
• Data sources: Climate inputs (used as the only source of change for LSM forcing); LSM outputs (used to fit the Budyko framework); Synthetic forcings (constructed to isolate the effects of changes in annual means or intra-annual distribution of precipitation).

Main Results

• Trends in the annual averages of precipitation ($P$) are the dominant climate driver for trends in discharge ($Q$) across most of Europe.
• The second main climate driver influencing discharge trends is potential evapotranspiration (PET).
• Over the Mediterranean area, changes in the intra-annual distribution of $P$ have a higher impact on discharge than trends in PET.
• The effects of changes in the intra-annual distribution of climate variables must be explicitly addressed when analyzing long-term changes in annual discharge.

Contributions

• Proposes a novel methodology combining the Budyko framework with LSM outputs and synthetic forcings to rigorously separate the influence of changes in climate annual means from changes in intra-annual distribution on discharge.
• Provides quantitative evidence that while annual mean precipitation dominates discharge trends generally, intra-annual variability is a critical and sometimes dominant driver in specific, climate-sensitive regions (e.g., the Mediterranean).

Funding

Not explicitly detailed in the abstract.

Citation

@article{Collignan2023Budyko,
  author = {Collignan, Julie and Polcher‬, Jan and Bastin, Sophie and Quintana‐Seguí, Pere},
  title = {Budyko Framework Based Analysis of the Effect of Climate Change on Watershed Evaporation Efficiency and Its Impact on Discharge Over Europe},
  journal = {Water Resources Research},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1029/2023wr034509},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2023wr034509}
}

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