Changes in Streamflow Statistical Structure across United States due to
Recent Climate Change
Abstract
A variety of watershed responses to climate change are expected due to
non-linear interactions between various hydrologic processes acting at
different timescales that are modulated by watershed properties. Changes
in statistical structure (spectral properties) of streamflow in the USA
due to climate change were studied for water years 1980-2013. The
Fractionally differenced Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average
(FARIMA) model was fit to the deseasonalized streamflow time-series to
model its statistical structure. FARIMA allows the separation of
streamflow into low frequency (slowly varying) and high frequency (fast
varying) components. Results show that in snow dominated watersheds, the
contribution of low frequency components to total streamflow variance
has decreased over the study period, and the contribution of high
frequency components has increased. The change in snow dominated
watersheds was primarily driven by changes in rainfall statistics and
changes in snow water equivalent but also by changes in seasonal
temperature statistics. Among rain-driven watersheds, the contribution
of high frequency components generally increased in arid regions but
decreased in humid regions. In both humid and arid rain-driven
watersheds, increasing winter temperature was responsible for the change
in streamflow regimes. These results have consequences for
predictability of streamflow in the presence of climate change. We
expect that changes in the high frequency component will result in
poorer predictability of streamflow.