Premium
An error analysis of the Budyko hypothesis for assessing the contribution of climate change to runoff
Author(s) -
Yang Hanbo,
Yang Dawen,
Hu Qingfang
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1002/2014wr015451
Subject(s) - surface runoff , climate change , precipitation , environmental science , evaporation , potential evaporation , approximation error , order (exchange) , hydrology (agriculture) , climatology , econometrics , mathematics , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , statistics , geology , geography , economics , ecology , geotechnical engineering , biology , oceanography , finance
Many previous studies have evaluated the hydrologic response to climate change using the first‐order approximation (first‐order Taylor expansion) of the Mezentsev‐Choudhury‐Yang equation (formulating the Budyko hypothesis), which has a parameter n representing catchment characteristics. However, no studies have paid attention to the error due to the first‐order approximation. This study therefore estimates this error to improve the theoretical framework for assessing the contribution of climate change to runoff based on the Budyko hypothesis. Specifically, the error increases when precipitation ( P ) decreases and potential evaporation ( E 0 ) increases, and n increases. Therefore, an increasing P or decreasing E 0 leads to an underestimate of the climatic contributions, while a decreasing P or increasing E 0 leads to an overestimate. In addition, we suggest a new method to accurately estimate the contribution of climate change to runoff.