Impacts of climate change on the hydro-climatology of the upper Ishikari river basin,Japan

Evidence for climate change impacts on the hydro-climatology of Japan is plentiful. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the impacts of possible future climate change scenarios on the hydro-climatology of the upper Ishikari River basin, Hokkaido, Japan. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool was set up, calibrated, and validated for the hydrological modeling of the study area. The Statistical DownScaling Model version 4.2 was used to downscale the large-scale Hadley Centre Climate Model 3 Global Circulation Model A2 and B2 scenarios data into finer scale resolution. After model calibration and testing of the downscaling procedure, the SDSM-downscaled climate outputs were used as an input to run the calibrated SWAT model for the three future periods: 2030s (2020–2039), 2060s (2050–2069), and 2090s (2080–2099). The period 1981–2000 was taken as the baseline period against which comparison was made. Results showed that the average annual maximum temperature might increase by 1.80 and 2.01, 3.41 and 3.12, and 5.69 and 3.76 °C, the average annual minimum temperature might increase by 1.41 and 1.49, 2.60 and 2.34, and 4.20 and 2.93 °C, and the average annual precipitation might decrease by 5.78 and 8.08, 10.18 and 12.89, and 17.92 and 11.23% in 2030s, 2060s, and 2090s for A2a and B2a emission scenarios, respectively. The annual mean streamflow may increase for the all three future periods except the 2090s under the A2a scenario. Among them, the largest increase is possibly observed in the 2030s for A2a scenario, up to approximately 7.56%. Uncertainties were found within the GCM, the downscaling method, and the hydrological model itself, which were probably enlarged because only one single GCM (HaDCM3) was used in this study.