The Effects of Climate Change on Flood-Generating Mechanisms in the
Assiniboine and Red River Basins
Soheil Bakhtiari
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
Corresponding Author:[email protected]
Author ProfileAbstract
Flood events are influenced by terrestrial factors including land cover,
land and water management, watershed physiographic features, and
hydro-climatic components including snowmelt and precipitation. In
Canada, flooding is a frequent and prominent natural disaster, which is
modulated by different flood-generating mechanisms. In this study, we
assess the intensity and frequency of three flood-generating mechanisms
including Rain on Snow (ROS), intense rainfall, and snowmelt-driven
flood events over the Assiniboine-Red River basin, which is one of the
most flood-prone regions in Canada and located in the Lake Winnipeg
watershed. We downscale and bias correct seven Global Climate Models
(GCMs) that participated in CMIP6 using two methods of Bias
Correction/Constructed Analogues with Quantile mapping (BCCAQ) (BCCAQ)
and Multivariate Bias Correction (MBC). The observed and downscaled
climate variables (precipitation and temperature) are used to drive a
process-based distributed snow model to evaluate the changes in
flood-generation mechanisms in the historical and future periods. The
projected future changes are analyzed under policy-relevant global mean
temperature (GMT) increases from 1.0 °C to 3.0 °C above the
pre-industrial period. Overall, all models project higher regional
temperature increases compared to the global mean with warmer and wetter
winters. The snow model results indicate future decreases in the snow
cover duration, snowmelt rate, and snow water equivalent (SWE), and
earlier shifts in the maximum SWE timing. Moreover, both the intensity
and frequency of ROS events increase in all seasons except summers.
However, the increases in the rain and snowmelt events are mostly
projected to occur in the spring.