Assessing the Impacts of Climate Variability on the Water Resources in the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Basin

摘要

An understanding of the effect of climate teleconnection patterns on the hydrological cycle is important for the long term management of water resources. In this paper we examine the effect of ENSO on surface runoff in the Rio Grande basin. The watershed, which is shared between the U.S. and Mexico, is vital for the economic activities of both countries. The runoff values, obtained at 1/8° resolution, were generated by the NOAH land surface model driven using the NLDAS2 datasets for the period 1979-2008. The basin was divided into 6 distinct regions and analyzed separately. The land surface model realistically captured the hydro-climatic variations across the basin. Continuous wavelet plots of NINO 3.4, gauged rainfall and model runoff were produced and a strong correlation between ENSO and runoff was observed.