Impacts of Precipitation Type Variations on Runoff Changes in the Source Regions of the Yangtze and Yellow River Basins in the Past 40 Years

Abstract

Variations of precipitation type can exert substantial impacts on hydrological processes, yet few studies have quantified the impacts of precipitation type variations on runoff changes in high−altitude regions. In this study, we attempted to examine the potential impacts of precipitation type variations induced by the warming climate on the runoff changes of the source regions of the Yangtze River and Yellow River basins from 1979 to 2018, where the mean elevation is over 4000 m. A modified precipitation type identification method using the wet-bulb temperature, and a runoff change attribution method based on a modified Budyko framework has been applied. Results showed that fluctuations of precipitation contributed to the majority of the runoff variations in the source regions of the Yangtze River basin, which accounted for 51.64%. However, the changes of characteristic parameter n, which indicates the impacts of the underlying surface, explained 56.22% of the runoff changes in the source regions of the Yellow River. It was shown that the trend of shifting from snowfall to rainfall due to a warming climate could result in runoff decreasing, which contributed to 24.06% and 11.29% of the runoff changes in the two source regions, comparatively.