The effect of climate change on the simulated streamflow of six Canadian rivers based on the CanRCM4 regional climate model

Arora, Vivek K.; Lima, Aranildo; Shrestha, Rajesh

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-291-2025

Articles | Volume 29, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-291-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-291-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 29, issue 1

Research article

|

16 Jan 2025

Research article |

| 16 Jan 2025

The effect of climate change on the simulated streamflow of six Canadian rivers based on the CanRCM4 regional climate model

Vivek K. Arora, Aranildo Lima, and Rajesh Shrestha

Data sets

Daily streamflow at 0.5 deg resolution generated using 0.22 deg runoff from the historical (1986-2005) and two future scenarios' (RCP 4.5 and 8.5, 2081-2100) simulations of CanRCM4 for its North American domain Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12775139

CanRCM4 data made available for CORDEX experiments Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) https://climate-modelling.canada.ca/climatemodeldata/canrcm/CanRCM4/

The Canadian Regional Climate Model Large Ensemble Environment and Climate Change Canada https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/83aa1b18-6616-405e-9bce-af7ef8c2031c

Short summary

This study presents a Canada-wide assessment of climate change impacts on the hydro-climatology of the region's major river basins. We find that precipitation, runoff, and temperature are all expected to increase over Canada in the future. The northerly Mackenzie and Yukon rivers are relatively less affected by climate change compared to the southerly Fraser and Columbia rivers, which are located in the milder northwestern Pacific region.