ROBIN: Reference Observatory of Basins for INternational hydrological climate change detection.

与化石燃料燃烧有关的全球变暖正在改变世界气候，并由此改变了水循环。未来的气候预测表明，水文极端事件（洪水和干旱）将变得更加频繁和严重，从而进一步加剧它们对生命和生计以及基础设施和经济造成的重大影响。为了适应未来水资源供应的变化，我们需要预测未来洪涝和干旱的发生情况。数值模拟模型用于提供这些场景，但它们非常复杂且高度不确定。为了更好地理解和约束这些基于模型的预测，我们需要量化水循环中的新趋势。这需要长期记录过去的水文观测。河流流量（河流中流动的水量）特别有用，因为河流流量综合了流域覆盖的大片地区的气候过程。实际上，河流流量也是气候变化对社会和环境影响最大的一种方式：一端是毁灭性的洪水，另一端是干旱，造成公共供水、工业、灌溉和野生动物的水资源短缺。在世界范围内，对河流流量的长期趋势进行了许多研究。然而，尽管有这些过去的研究，我们对观测到的趋势的信心仍然很低——即使是在IPCC最先进的主要报告中也是如此，这些报告通常对洪水和干旱的报告持谨慎态度。主要原因是大多数河流都受到人为干扰的严重改变（例如，水坝、用于灌溉、家庭或工业消费的大量取水）。这些干扰可以掩盖气候变化的“信号”——也就是说，许多河流的趋势可能与全球变暖无关，实际上可能与气候趋势相反，这是由于人类的改变，如大坝建设。为了检测气候驱动的趋势，我们需要分析相对未受此类人类影响干扰的河流流域。认识到这一点，一些国家宣布了“参考水文网络”（RHNs），其中包括测量河流流量的地点，以及没有或很少受到人类影响的地点。然而，到目前为止，还没有在全球范围内整合这些措施的努力。这对IPCC这样的全球评估来说是一个问题，因为各国使用不同的方法来评估趋势，这限制了比较。我们联盟的成员此前在这一领域率先进行了首次跨大西洋研究。通过ROBIN计划，我们正在推进一项真正的全球努力，以汇集全球RHN。除了流域网络，ROBIN也是研究人员和机构分享专业知识的网络。该网络包括来自巴西、智利、马拉维、南非、印度、泰国、新西兰和澳大利亚的领先专家，扩大了我们在欧洲和北美的现有网络。至关重要的是，这些新国家跨越了广泛的不同气候，合作伙伴还带来了具体的专业知识（例如，可以支持ROBIN的全球数据集的独特知识，或者对经常干涸的“短暂”河流的专业分析）。ROBIN将与其他国家合作，在项目的整个生命周期内进行扩展，并为未来的网络规划一条可持续发展的道路。在这方面，至关重要的是，ROBIN得到了国际组织（联合国教科文组织、世界气象组织和政府间气候变化专门委员会）的支持，这些组织将确保为期两年的项目的可持续性。罗宾还将提供第一个真正的全球范围的河流流量趋势分析，使用未受干扰的集水区。这将是一个新颖的、高影响力的分析本身，但也将展示网络的潜力。总的来说，这些活动将有助于实现ROBIN的愿景，即未来IPCC的评估将对气候变化对水循环（包括洪水和干旱）的影响做出更有信心的评估。

Global warming, associated with the burning of fossil fuels, is changing the world's climate, and with this, it is altering the water cycle. Future climate projections suggest hydrological extremes (floods and droughts) will become more frequent and severe - further heightening the already substantial impacts they cause to lives and livelihoods, as well as infrastructure and economies. To adapt to future changes in water availability, we need projections of future flood and drought occurrence. Numerical simulation models are used to provide such scenarios, but they are very complex and highly uncertain. To better understand and constrain these model-based projections, we need to quantify emerging trends in the water cycle. This requires long records of past hydrological observations. River flows (the volume of water flowing in rivers) are especially useful because river flows integrate climate processes over the large areas covered by drainage basins. River flows are also, in practice, one way in which climate change will most impact society and the environment: through devastating floods at one end of the spectrum to droughts at the other, causing water shortages for public supply, industry, irrigation and wildlife. Across the world, there have been many studies of long-term trends in river flow. Despite this past research, however, our confidence in observed trends remains very low - even in the major state-of-the-art IPCC reports, which have typically been cautious in their reporting of floods and droughts. The key reason is that most rivers are heavily modified by human disturbances (e.g. dams, large removals of water for irrigation, domestic or industrial consumption). These disturbances can obscure the 'signal' of climate change - that is, trends in many rivers may bear no relation to global warming and may in fact be opposing the climate trend, due to human modifications such as dam construction. To detect climate-driven trends we need to analyse river basins that are relatively undisturbed by such human impacts. Recognizing this, some countries have declared 'Reference Hydrometric Networks' (RHNs) of locations where river flows are measured, and where human impacts are absent or minimal. However, to date there have been no efforts to integrate these globally. This is a problem for global assessments like the IPCC, as countries use different methods to assess trends, which limits comparison. Members of our consortium have previously pioneered a first trans-Atlantic study in this field. With the ROBIN initiative, we are now advancing a truly worldwide effort to bring together a global RHN. As well as the network of river basins, ROBIN is the network of researchers and institutions sharing expertise. The network includes leading experts from Brazil, Chile, Malawi, South Africa, India, Thailand, New Zealand and Australia, augmenting our existing network across Europe and North America. Crucially, these new countries span a broad range of different climates and the partners also bring specific expertise (for example, unique knowledge of global datasets that can support ROBIN, or specialist analysis of 'ephemeral' rivers that often run dry). ROBIN will engage other countries to expand over the lifetime of the project and set out a pathway to a sustainable legacy for the network going into the future. In this regard, crucially, ROBIN is supported by international organisations (UNESCO, WMO and the IPCC) who will ensure sustainability following the two-year project. ROBIN will also deliver the first truly global scale analysis of trends in river flows using undisturbed catchments. This will be a novel, high impact analysis in its own right, but will also showcase the potential of the network. Taken together, these activities will help realise the vision of ROBIN that future IPCC assessments will make more confident appraisals of climate change impacts on the water cycle, including floods and droughts.