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

与化石燃料燃烧相关的全球变暖正在改变世界气候，也随之改变着水循环。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--进一步加剧它们对生活和生计以及基础设施和经济已经造成的重大影响。为了适应未来可用水的变化，我们需要对未来发生的洪水和干旱进行预测。数值模拟模型被用来提供这样的情景，但它们非常复杂，并且具有高度的不确定性。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。这需要对过去的水文观测进行长期记录。河流流量(河流中的水量)特别有用，因为河流流量综合了流域覆盖的大片区域的气候过程。在实践中，河流流动也是气候变化对社会和环境影响最大的一种方式：一方面是毁灭性的洪水，另一方面是干旱，导致公共供应、工业、灌溉和野生动物缺水。在世界各地，已经有许多关于河流流量长期趋势的研究。然而，尽管过去进行了这项研究，我们对观察到的趋势的信心仍然很低--即使是在政府间气候变化专门委员会最先进的主要报告中也是如此，这些报告在报告洪水和干旱时通常是谨慎的。关键原因是，大多数河流受到人为干扰(如大坝、灌溉用水的大量转移、家庭或工业用水)的严重影响。这些干扰可能会掩盖气候变化的“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背道而驰，这是由于人为因素造成的，比如修建大坝。为了发现气候驱动的趋势，我们需要分析相对不受这种人类影响的河流流域。认识到这一点，一些国家已经宣布建立“参考水文网络”(RHN)，其中包括测量河流流量的地点，以及没有人类影响或人类影响最小的地点。然而，到目前为止，还没有在全球范围内整合这些方面的努力。对于IPCC这样的全球评估来说，这是一个问题，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曾率先在这一领域开展了一项跨大西洋研究。通过Robin倡议，我们现在正在推动一项真正的全球努力，将全球RHN聚集在一起。除了流域网络，Robin还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顶尖专家，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，合作伙伴还带来了特定的专业知识(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将在该项目的整个生命周期内吸引其他国家进行扩张，并为该网络未来的可持续遗产开辟一条道路。在这方面，至关重要的是，Robin得到了国际组织(教科文组织、世界气象组织和气专委)的支持，这些组织将确保在为期两年的项目之后的可持续性。Robin还将利用未受干扰的集水区对河流流动趋势进行第一次真正的全球范围分析。这将是一项新颖的、高影响力的分析，但也将展示该网络的潜力。综上所述，这些活动将有助于实现罗宾的愿景，即未来的IPCC评估将对气候变化对水循环的影响做出更有信心的评估，包括洪水和干旱。

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.