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Dynamic Downscaling
Monthly Statistical Downscaling for water and climate change impact studies
Daily Statistical Downscaling for water and climate change impact studies
Machine learning techniques in statistical downscaling
Stationarity and non-stationarity climate – Past and future
Climate change implications on water security
Impact of Climate change on drought
Climate change implications on low flow hydrology
Climate change implications on flood hydrology
Climate change implications on evapotranspiration and agriculture
Climate change implications on river water quality
Climate change implications on environmental flows
Water and energy nexus – climate change implications
Social impacts of water and climate change
Economic impacts of water and climate change
Detection and attribution of climate change
Impact of Climate change versus other changes (such as landuse land cover) on water resources
Climate Trend analysis including step changes.
Invited Review Papers
Collection Purpose
These are critical and comprehensive reviews that provide new insights or interpretation of a subject through thorough and systematic evaluation of available evidence, from experts in the field.
Topics of Interest
Potential topics for the Invited Review Papers could be on, but not exclusively limited to:
Published Invited Review Papers
Journal of Water and Climate Change (2020) 11 (1): 1–29.
Date Online: 01 March 2020
Abstract: The rapid changes in global average surface temperature have unfathomed influences on human society, environment, ecosystem, availability of food and fresh water. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and human-induced effects are playing an enhanced role in climate change. It is of utmost importance to ascertain the hydroclimatological changes in order to ascertain the characteristics of detection and attribution (D&A) of human-induced anthropogenic influences on recent warming. Climate change D&A are interrelated. Their study enhances our understanding about the rudimentary causes leading to climate changes and hence, considered as a decisive element in all Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports. An extensive discussion of the concerned scientific literature on climate change D&A is indispensably needed for the scientific community to assess climate change threats in clear terms. This study has reviewed various processes and advances in climate change D&A analyses at global/regional scales during the past few decades. Regression-based optimal fingerprint approach is majorly employed in climate change D&A studies. The accumulation of inferences presented in this study from numerous studies could be extremely helpful for the scientific community and policymakers as they deal with climate change adaptation and mitigation challenges.
Journal of Water and Climate Change (2020) 11 (2): 327–340.
Date Online: 23 March 2020
Abstract: Environmental water represents a key resource in managing freshwater ecosystems against pervasive threats. The impacts of climate change add further pressures to environmental water management, yet anticipating these impacts through modelling approaches remains challenging due to the complexities of the climate, hydrological and ecological systems. In this paper, we review the challenges posed by each of these three areas. Large uncertainties in predicting climatic changes and non-stationarities in hydrological and ecological responses make anticipating impacts difficult. In addition, a legacy of relying on modelling approaches informed by historic dependencies in environmental water science may confound the prediction of ecological responses when extrapolating under novel conditions. We also discuss applying ecohydrological methods to support decision-making and review applications of bottom-up climate impact assessments (specifically eco-engineering decision scaling) to freshwater ecosystems. These approaches offer a promising way of incorporating climatic uncertainty and balancing competing environmental objectives, but some practical challenges remain in their adoption for modelling environmental water outcomes under climate change. Journal of Water and Climate Change (2020) 11 (3): 600–632.
Date Online: 13 April 2020
Abstract: Droughts of greater severity are expected to occur more frequently at larger space-time scales under global warming and climate change. Intensified drought and increased rainfall intermittency will heighten tree mortality. To mitigate drought-driven societal and environmental hazards, reliable long-term drought forecasting is critical. This review examines causative mechanisms for drought and tree mortality, and synthesizes stochastic, statistical, dynamical, and hybrid statistical-dynamical drought forecasting models as well as theoretical, empirical, and mechanistic tree mortality forecasting models. Since an increase in global mean temperature changes the strength of sea surface temperature (SST) teleconnections, forecasting models should have the flexibility to incorporate the varying causality of drought. Some of the statistical drought forecasting models, which have nonlinear and nonstationary natures, can be merged with dynamical models to compensate for their lack of stochastic structure in order to improve forecasting skills. Since tree mortality is mainly affected by a hydraulic failure under drought conditions, mechanistic forecasting models, due to their capacity to track the percentage of embolisms against available soil water, are adequate to forecast tree mortality. This study also elucidates approaches to improve long-term drought forecasting and regional tree mortality forecasting as a future outlook for drought studies. Journal of Water and Climate Change (2020) 11 (3): 577–599.
Date Online: 13 May 2020
Abstract: Global climate models (GCMs) are developed to simulate past climate and produce projections of climate in future. Their roles in ascertaining regional issues and possible solutions in water resources planning/management are appreciated across the world. However, there is substantial uncertainty in the future projections of GCM(s) for practical and regional implementation which has attracted criticism by the water resources planners. The present paper aims at reviewing the selection of GCMs and focusing on performance indicators, ranking of GCMs and ensembling of GCMs and covering different geographical regions. In addition, this paper also proposes future research directions. Journal of Water and Climate Change jwc2020276.
Date Online: 11 June 2020
Abstract: This paper provides a review of the changing nature of the water–energy nexus in urban water supply systems (UWSSs) due to the primary long-term drivers of climate change, population growth and technological development from the ‘energy for water’ perspective. We identify both the physical changes in UWSSs, as well as the changes in the attributes of the system, both of which contribute to the changing nature of the water–energy nexus. We provide an overview of responses to this change in the water–energy nexus through the lens of four application areas, namely long-term planning, system design, system operation and system rehabilitation, based on the review of 52 papers. Ten responses in three categories are found to be commonly considered in each of the four application areas. The three categories are energy or greenhouse gas reduction, integrated modelling and planning, and improving social benefits. The main drivers of these responses may vary with the application area. Based on the review outcomes, we outline the gaps in the responses in relation to the changing nature of the water–energy nexus in UWSSs, providing directions for future research on improving UWSS efficiency considering the long-term drivers.