Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Comparative Assessment Of Projected Meteorological And Hydrological Droughts: Elucidating The Role Of Temperature, Ali Ahmadalipour, Hamid Moradkhani, Mehmet C. Demirel

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The changing climate and the associated future increases in temperature are expected to have impacts on drought characteristics and hydrologic cycle. This paper investigates the projected changes in spatiotemporal characteristics of droughts and their future attributes over the Willamette River Basin (WRB) in the Pacific Northwest U.S. The analysis is performed using two subsets of downscaled CMIP5 global climate models (GCMs) each consisting of 10 models from two future scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) for 30 years of historical period (1970–1999) and 90 years of future projections (2010–2099). Hydrologic modeling is conducted using the Precipitation Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) as a …