Changes in River Special Runoff in Estonia during the Period of Minimum Discharge in Summer 1951-2016
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Changes in river specialrunoff in Estonia during the period of minimum discharge in summer 1951-2016 Mait Sepp Zaragoza, 12 February 2018
Changes by trend of mean, maximum and minimum temperature in Estonia in 1966-2010
Changes by trend of spatial mean precipitation (mm) in Estonia during 1966-2010 Highprecipitationperiod 1975-2006
Estonian surface runoff in 1924 – 2014 (catchment area 45227 km2) (Ennet, Reihan, Järvet, Pihelgas, 2016)
So, what about the runoff in summer? • Summer runoff as a proxy for drought • Higher air temperature in summer -> higher evaporation -> less water in rivers • Shorter snow cover duration and earlier snowmelt-> less water in spring -> prolonged summer minimum period • But precipitation in summer has increased?
Drasticchanges in winter No changes in summer
What about minimum runoff? • Monthlymeanrunoffcanbeaffectedbyshortbutintensiveflashfloods • Minimumrunoffas a mesure of wateravailability in landscape • Are there any changes in the summer runoff minimum? • Summer minimumrunoffperiod?
Data • Estonian Weather Service • 16 stations + spatialaverage • Dailydata • Period 1951-2016 • Specialrunoff (l/s*km²) • May-August • Lineartrends and regimeshifts • Result: notmuchchanges…
Very few statistically significant trends or regime shifts • Some regime shifts that coinside with 1975-2006 high water period • General tendencies show increase in minimum runoff
Except for May RainyMayorshift in springflood? 6 of 16 stations have negative trend in minimum value
Except for June • 9 of 16 stations show positive trend in monthly mean and minimum runoff June has become rainy
How to define and analyse summer low water period? Lenght of theperiod and meanvalue
STARS method • Regime shifts • S. N. Rodionov (Uni. Of Washington, Seattle) • NOAA Bering Sea Centre • https://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/regimes/ • The method is based on the sequential application of the Student's t-test
Significancelevel: 0.1 Cut-offLenght: 30 (days) HWP:1
Lenght: 188 days, Weightedspecial runoff:1.72
It looks nice, however… • Largeinterannualvariance • Differentrivers – differentregimes • i.e. setting 0.1/30/1 isnotuniversal • Results: • No statisticallysignificanttrends • Lenght and weightedspecialrunoff are correlated (r = -0.21…-0.56) • Shortertheperiod, highertherunoff
Tendences In linewithclimatepredictions: Morewater in NorthernEurope Morewater in thesystem. Howmuch?