Objective Understanding the trajectory of water resources under environmental change is a frontier in hydrological science and a critical need for basin-scale water management. The water source conservation area of the Yellow River Basin, which supplies a substantial portion of the river's flow, faces increasing uncertainty under future climate warming. However, quantitative assessments that explicitly account for dynamic underlying surface conditions and multi-scenario climate forcing remain limited in this region. This study aimed to develop a distributed hydrological modeling framework to project future runoff changes under multiple emission pathways and identify the spatial and temporal patterns of runoff responses to warming and precipitation variability. Methods The distributed water balance model with dynamic underlying surface conditions (RCCC-DWBM) was employed to simulate runoff processes across the water source conservation area of the Yellow River Basin. The model was calibrated and validated using observed hydrometeorological data from 33 hydrological stations covering the mainstream and major tributaries. To project future water availability, the model was forced with bias-corrected climate outputs from 13 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) general circulation models under three Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios: SSP1-2.6 (low emissions), SSP2-4.5 (medium emissions), and SSP5-8.5 (high emissions). Future periods were defined as the near term (2026—2045) and mid-term (2046—2065), with the baseline period of 1985—2015 used for calculating anomalies. Model performance was evaluated using the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and relative error in total runoff. Runoff changes were analyzed separately for three subregions: upstream of Lanzhou, the Weihe River basin, and the Yiluo River basin. Results and Discussions The RCCC-DWBM model showed good performance in simulating historical runoff. At the 33 hydrological stations, the NSE values for runoff simulations mostly exceeded 0.6, and the relative errors in total runoff were generally within ±5%, indicating that the model was suitable for scenario-based projections. Future temperature projections under all SSP scenarios indicated a consistent warming trend, with the greatest warming under SSP5-8.5 and comparatively moderate warming under SSP1-2.6. The magnitude of warming increased progressively from the near term to the mid-term. Spatially, the region upstream of Lanzhou experienced more pronounced warming than the Weihe and Yiluo basins. In contrast, precipitation showed substantial interannual variability without a consistent unidirectional trend. Most models projected a slight increasing tendency, particularly upstream of Lanzhou, although the changes were dominated by natural variability. Runoff responses differed markedly across scenarios and subregions. Under SSP1-2.6, runoff generally exhibited an increasing trend. Relative to the baseline, only the Yiluo River showed a modest reduction (-0.58%) in the near term, whereas runoff upstream of Lanzhou and in the Weihe River increased by 9.62% and 8.48%, respectively. In the mid-term, runoff increased across all three regions, with the Weihe River registering the largest increase (16.19%) among all scenario-region combinations. Under SSP2-4.5, runoff changes were more heterogeneous. In the near term, only the region upstream of Lanzhou exhibited a marginal increase (+1.74%), whereas runoff in the Yiluo and Weihe basins decreased by 7.98% and 8.27%, respectively. By the mid-term, all three regions showed negative anomalies, with runoff upstream of Lanzhou decreasing by 0.41% and the midstream tributaries continuing to experience substantial declines. Under SSP5-8.5, runoff upstream of Lanzhou increased marginally (+1.13%) in the near term but declined by 5.92% in the mid-term, with concurrent runoff deficits across all three regions. Spatially, the region upstream of Lanzhou benefited from snow and glacial meltwater, which provided a short-term buffer against warming-induced runoff losses. However, under prolonged extreme warming, this buffering capacity was progressively depleted, leading to a marked reduction in runoff generation. In contrast, the midstream Yiluo and Weihe basins exhibited greater sensitivity to thermal perturbations, with runoff reductions exceeding 7% even under the medium-emission scenario. Temporally, although short-term meltwater replenishment locally augmented runoff, the long-term increase in evapotranspiration associated with sustained warming eventually outweighed the combined contributions of precipitation and meltwater, resulting in an overall contraction in basin-wide water availability. Conclusions The findings demonstrated that sustained lowcarbon development (SSP1-2.6) was conducive to maintaining runoff stability in the Yellow River water source conservation area, with runoff projected to increase or remain relatively stable through the mid-term. In contrast, continued medium- to high-emission pathways (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5) resulted in persistent runoff reductions and exacerbated water supply-demand imbalances by the mid-21st century. These findings provide a scientific basis for adaptive water resource management under a warming climate and highlight the importance of emission mitigation in preserving hydrological services in this vulnerable region.
全球变暖已是不争的事实,政府间气候变化专门委员会(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,IPCC)第六次评估报告表明,2011—2020年全球陆地平均气温较工业化前(1850—1900年)升高了1.09 ℃,极端降水事件具有增多、增强的趋势[1]。随着经济社会的快速发展,土地利用、流域下垫面发生显著变化[2‒3]。变化环境下中国主要江河实测径流发生显著变化,北方地区径流减少更为明显[4]。中国水资源短缺,水是经济社会发展的刚性约束,径流的丰枯变化及演变趋势直接关系着经济社会的稳定发展。
环境变化下水资源情势及其应对是区域可持续发展关注的焦点。国际水文科学协会(International Association of Hydrological Sciences,IAHS)新一阶段的十年(2023—2032年)科学计划“IAHS-HELPING”(Hydrology Engaging Local People IN one Global world)旨在研究提出全球水危机的解决方案[5];联合国教科文组织(United Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization,UNESCO)也在国际水文计划第九阶段(IHP-Ⅸ,2022—2029年)研究计划中将科学构筑变化环境下水安全世界作为该阶段的核心主题[6]。科学预估水资源情势,是全球水危机情势解析和水安全保障的重要基础。
未来气候和水资源演变趋势,不仅是国际水科学研究的重点,也是流域管理机构和地方水利部门关注的焦点。第六次国际耦合模式比较计划(The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase Six,CMIP6)中,气候模式及其共享社会经济路径(Shared Socioeconomic Pathways,SSPs)已成为分析未来气候变化最主要的模式和情景[7‒9]。然而,气候变化预估最大的问题是不确定性,水资源影响评估正从依赖单一模型向集成化、多情景方向发展,多模型集合方法正逐步成为降低预测不确定性的重要路径[10]。Mengistu等[11]提出一种气候变化影响下水资源脆弱性的多模型评估框架,通过整合多个气候模式与水文模型的输出结果,有效减小了单一模型带来的系统偏差,为脆弱性评估提供了更具稳健性的技术路线。
RCCC‒WBM(water balance model developed by Research Center for Climate Change)模型是由水利部应对气候变化研究中心团队研发的具有一定物理机制解释的大尺度水文模型[30]。模型输入包括气温、降水和水面蒸发;模型根据气温进行雨雪分割;基于超渗和蓄满两种产流机制进行地面径流计算;基于降雪过程进行积雪和融雪过程刻画;降雨下渗进入土壤层,以线性水库出流理论估算地下径流,3种径流线性叠加形成流域出口径流量[31]。在采用研究流域若干年水文气象资料率定RCCC‒WBM模型时,优化的模型参数反映了对应时期平均的下垫面状态。然而,在全球变暖和生态修复等人类活动的影响下,一方面,流域植被的年代际和季节变化通过影响蒸发和产流调控河川径流;另一方面,高寒地区的季节性和常年冻土层对全球变暖非常敏感,气温升高在一定程度上使冻土活动层增厚、包气带扩大,通过改变下渗影响径流过程。Wang等[32]充分考虑动态植被和气温对水文循环过程的直接和间接影响,在RCCC‒WBM模型的基础上构建了基于动态下垫面的RCCC‒DWBM模型,其结构如图2所示。图2中,为动态土壤最大蓄水容量,为第i时段温度的函数。
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