TY - JOUR
T1 - The Andes Cordillera. Part IV
T2 - spatio-temporal freshwater run-off distribution to adjacent seas (1979–2014)
AU - Mernild, Sebastian H.
AU - Liston, Glen E.
AU - Hiemstra, Christopher
AU - Beckerman, Andrew P.
AU - Yde, Jacob C.
AU - McPhee, James
PY - 2017/6/15
Y1 - 2017/6/15
N2 - The spatio-temporal freshwater river run-off pattern from individual basins, including their run-off magnitude and change (1979/1980–2013/2014), was simulated for the Andes Cordillera west of the Continental Divide in an effort to understand run-off variations and freshwater fluxes to adjacent fjords, Pacific Ocean, and Drake Passage. The modelling tool SnowModel/HydroFlow was applied to simulate river run-off at 3-h intervals to resolve the diurnal cycle and at 4-km horizontal grid increments using atmospheric forcing from NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) data sets. Simulated river run-off hydrographs were verified against independent observed hydrographs. For the domain, 86% of the simulated run-off originated from rain, 12% from snowmelt, and 2% from ice melt, whereas for Chile, the water-source distribution was 69, 24, and 7%, respectively. Along the Andes Cordillera, the 35-year mean basin outlet-specific run-off (L s−1 km−2) showed a characteristic regional hourglass shape pattern with highest run-off in both Colombia and Ecuador and in Patagonia, and lowest run-off in the Atacama Desert area. An Empirical Orthogonal Function analysis identified correlations between the spatio-temporal pattern of run-off and flux to the El Niño Southern Oscillation Index and to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
AB - The spatio-temporal freshwater river run-off pattern from individual basins, including their run-off magnitude and change (1979/1980–2013/2014), was simulated for the Andes Cordillera west of the Continental Divide in an effort to understand run-off variations and freshwater fluxes to adjacent fjords, Pacific Ocean, and Drake Passage. The modelling tool SnowModel/HydroFlow was applied to simulate river run-off at 3-h intervals to resolve the diurnal cycle and at 4-km horizontal grid increments using atmospheric forcing from NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) data sets. Simulated river run-off hydrographs were verified against independent observed hydrographs. For the domain, 86% of the simulated run-off originated from rain, 12% from snowmelt, and 2% from ice melt, whereas for Chile, the water-source distribution was 69, 24, and 7%, respectively. Along the Andes Cordillera, the 35-year mean basin outlet-specific run-off (L s−1 km−2) showed a characteristic regional hourglass shape pattern with highest run-off in both Colombia and Ecuador and in Patagonia, and lowest run-off in the Atacama Desert area. An Empirical Orthogonal Function analysis identified correlations between the spatio-temporal pattern of run-off and flux to the El Niño Southern Oscillation Index and to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
KW - Andes Cordillera
KW - freshwater run-off
KW - HydroFlow
KW - modelling
KW - NASA MERRA
KW - river
KW - South America
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84997582040&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/joc.4922
DO - 10.1002/joc.4922
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84997582040
SN - 0899-8418
VL - 37
SP - 3175
EP - 3196
JO - International Journal of Climatology
JF - International Journal of Climatology
IS - 7
ER -