Future Hydrologic Changes in a Subarctic River Basin in Canada

What is it about?

We describe a state-of-the-art framework for projecting hydrologic impacts due to enhanced warming and amplified moisture fluxes in the subarctic environment under anthropogenic climate change. We projected future hydrologic changes based on phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project global climate model simulations using the Variable Infiltration Capacity hydrologic model and a multivariate bias correction/downscaling method for the Liard basin in subarctic northwestern Canada. Subsequently, the variable importance of key climatic controls on a set of hydrologic indicators was analyzed using the random forests statistical model.

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Why is it important?

The ongoing hydrologic change in the Arctic/subarctic is expected to be amplified due to the enhanced future warming and wetness. Such alterations in the hydrologic regime, together with the loss of snowpack and permafrost, could have major implications on infrastructure and services in the regions