Warming winter, drying spring and shifting hydrological regimes in Northeast China under climate change

As an important agriculture production area in the world and a flood prone area, future hydro-climate changes in winter and spring in Northeast China could have remarkable influence on spring water resources and flood. Yet, studies on future hydro-climate variations with special considerations of snow influences remain limited so far in the region. Here, we studied future winter and spring hydro-climate changes to the end of the century with special considerations of snow variations under the RCP2.6, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 scenarios in Northeast China. A water and energy budget-based distributed biosphere hydrological model with improved snow physics was implemented. We find that winter and spring are warming 0.08 °C and 0.06 °C annually under 30 years moving average in RCP8.5. Air temperature increasing rate in winter is approximately two times higher than that in spring in 2030–2059. In this period, snow melt contribution to spring average runoff and maximum runoff decrease by at least 39% and 23%, respectively, and spring soil moisture decreases by 7%. The spring snow melt runoff peak will move from April to March under the warmest climate condition (i.e., 2070–2099 in RCP8.5). The earlier snow melt renders the snow melt contribution to total runoff decrease to almost zero in May, which could increase drought severity. This study sheds some lights on changes in hydrological regimes under climate change with a focus on snow melt and the influences in the entire Northeast China for the first time, and is helpful for adaption to future climate change.