Collaborative Research: Detection and attribution of changes in the hydrologic regimes of the Mackenzie, the Kuparuk and the Lena River Basins

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The objectives of this research are to detect and document changes in the storage of freshwater in the Arctic regions of the Western Canadian, Alaskan, and Eastern Siberian Arctic, to ascribe those changes to their land cover or climate source, and assess the impacts of past and future variations in storage components (e.g., active layer depth, lake volume) on freshwater inputs into the Arctic Ocean. The aim is to characterize the changing hydrologic regime spatially to facilitate accurate projections of future hydrologic conditions and to develop a numerical modeling capability that 1) accurately captures contemporary climatic and hydrologic dynamics, 2) projects reasonably accurate responses to future scenarios and 3) incorporates well documented algorithms that will be distributed to other modeling groups wishing to include dynamic land surface processes in arctic regions (e.g., for studies of vegetation dynamics or gas flux). The investigators will also provide a pan-Arctic perspective by using spatially-based model results to develop a statistically-based model. The research is divided broadly into two main components: process-level hydrologic studies and large-scale atmospheric studies, with a well-defined approach to bridge the scale differences. Process-level studies include field observations and analyses of the storage components in the hydrological cycle as well as modeling of their role in the hydrological cycle. Field studies include surveys of the main storage components, with literature searches and remote sensing filling in many of the gaps. Field studies on the watershed scale will also be conducted at several small watersheds along North/South transects covering the Middle Yukon, Kuparuk, Upper Yukon, Mackenzie and Lena watersheds where long-term records and on-going measurement programs exist. The WaterWERCs model will be applied to these small sub-watersheds for calibration and validation using contemporary records, and to the entire watersheds for both climate scenarios of the past, present and future driven from our atmospheric modeling. The atmospheric model, PAM, is a state-of-the-art regional climate model that will be tailored for use in a pan-Arctic setting and will be driven by gridded atmospheric re-analyses. The atmospheric model results will be validated with available observational data and the gridded model output will be used to force a hydrologic model.