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Snow‐dominated watersheds are bellwethers of climate change. Hydroclimate projections in such basins often find reductions in annual peak runoff due to decreased snowpack under global warming. British Columbia's Fraser River Basin (FRB) is a large, nival basin with exposure to moisture‐laden atmospheric rivers originating in the Pacific Ocean. Landfalling atmospheric rivers over the region in winter are projected to increase in both strength and frequency in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate models. We investigate future changes in hydrology and annual peak daily streamflow in the FRB using a hydrologic model driven by a bias‐corrected Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 ensemble. Under Representative Concentration Pathway (8.5), the FRB evolves toward a nival‐pluvial regime featuring an increasing association of extreme rainfall with annual peak daily flow, a doubling in cold season peak discharge, and a decrease in the return period of the largest historical flow, from a 1‐in‐200‐year to 1‐in‐50‐year event by the late 21st century.

Future sediment dynamics may be affected by changing climates or hydrological regimes because of the close link between hydrology and sediment erosion, deposition, and transport. Previously, investigations of these potential changes have been constrained by a combination of limited observational data, hydrological drivers, and appropriate mechanistic models. Additionally, there is often ambiguity regarding how to disentangle the impacts of climate and hydrology from direct human factors such as reservoirs and land‐use change, which often exert more control over sediment dynamics. In this study, we utilize a recently developed, large‐scale, distributed, mechanistic sediment transport model to project future sediment erosion, deposition, and transportation within the Fraser River Basin in British Columbia, Canada—a basin with historical water flux and sediment load observations and limited anthropogenic influences upstream of its delta. The sediment model is driven by synthetic land‐surface hydrology derived from Scenarios A1B, A2, and B1 of the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, which were provided by the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium. Resulting simulations of water flux and sediment load from 1965 to 1994 are first validated against observational data then compared with future projections. Future projections show an overall increase in annual hillslope erosion and in‐channel transportation, a shift towards earlier spring peak erosion and transportation, and longer persistence of the sediment signal through the year. These shifts in timing and annual yield may have deleterious effects on spawning sockeye salmon and are insufficient to counteract future coastal retreat caused by sea‐level rise.

This is the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium's 2017-2018 Corporate Report.

This newsletter discusses the IPCC's Special Report on a global warming of 1.5 °C, the summer of 2018 in BC, supporting agriculture in the Fraser Valley, PCIC's new Seasonal Maps Portal, Columbia Basin Trust workshops and Dr. Jana Sillmann's visit. The newsletter also has a staff spotlight on Matthew Benstead, covers talks delivered by Drs. Jana Sillmann and Whitney Huang, the most recent PCIC Science Brief on Paris Accord emissions and temperature limits, as well as PCIC publications and staff changes.

Modeling sediment transport through large basins presents a challenging problem. The relation between water flux and sediment load is complex, and substantial erosion and transport can occur over small spatial and temporal scales. Analysis of large‐scale basins often relies on lumped empirical models that do not consider spatial or subannual variability. In this study, we adapt a small‐scale, mechanistic, distributed suspended sediment transport model for application to large basins. The model is integrated into the Terrestrial Hydrology Model with Biochemistry to make use of the Terrestrial Hydrology Model with Biochemistry's dynamic water routing. The coupled model is applied to the 230,000‐km2 Fraser River Basin in British Columbia, Canada, using climatic and hydrological inputs provided by a historical run of the Variable Infiltration Capacity model. Hourly simulations are aggregated into monthly and long‐term averages which are compared against observations. Simulated long‐term lake sedimentation values are within an order of magnitude of observations, and monthly load simulations have an average R2 of 0.70 across the five study stations with available data. Model results indicate that sediment loads from tributaries do not heavily influence dynamics along the main stem and suggest the importance of network connectivity. Sensitivity analysis indicates that models may benefit from characterizing bed load irrespective of its contribution to total sediment load. Historical simulations over the 1965–2004 period reveal important changes in sediment dynamics that could not be captured with a lumped model, including a decrease in basin sediment load interannual variability driven by changes in runoff and load variability within a key subbasin.

Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have agreed to hold the “increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.” Comparison of the costs and benefits for different warming limits requires an understanding of how risks vary between warming limits. As changes in risk are often associated with changes in exposure due to projected changes in local or regional climate extremes, we analyze differences in the risks of extreme daily temperatures and extreme daily precipitation amounts under different warming limits. We show that global warming of 2°C would result in substantially larger changes in the probabilities of the extreme events than global warming of 1.5°C. For example, over the global land area, the probability of a warm extreme that occurs once every 20 years on average in the current climate is projected to increase 130% and 340% at the 1.5°C and 2.0°C warming levels, respectively (median values). Moreover, the relative changes in probability are larger for rarer, more extreme events, implying that risk assessments need to carefully consider the extreme event thresholds at which vulnerabilities occur.

We examine extreme temperature and precipitation under two potential geoengineering methods forming part of the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP). The solar dimming experiment G1 is designed to completely offset the global mean radiative forcing due to a CO2-quadrupling experiment (abrupt4 × CO2), while in GeoMIP experiment G4, the radiative forcing due to the representative concentration pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5) scenario is partly offset by a simulated layer of aerosols in the stratosphere. Both G1 and G4 geoengineering simulations lead to lower minimum temperatures (TNn) at higher latitudes and on land, primarily through feedback effects involving high-latitude processes such as snow cover, sea ice and soil moisture. There is larger cooling of TNn and maximum temperatures (TXx) over land compared with oceans, and the land–sea cooling contrast is larger for TXx than TNn. Maximum 5-day precipitation (Rx5day) increases over subtropical oceans, whereas warm spells (WSDI) decrease markedly in the tropics, and the number of consecutive dry days (CDDs) decreases in most deserts. The precipitation during the tropical cyclone (hurricane) seasons becomes less intense, whilst the remainder of the year becomes wetter. Stratospheric aerosol injection is more effective than solar dimming in moderating extreme precipitation (and flooding). Despite the magnitude of the radiative forcing applied in G1 being ∼ 7.7 times larger than in G4 and despite differences in the aerosol chemistry and transport schemes amongst the models, the two types of geoengineering show similar spatial patterns in normalized differences in extreme temperatures changes. Large differences mainly occur at northern high latitudes, where stratospheric aerosol injection more effectively reduces TNn and TXx. While the pattern of normalized differences in extreme precipitation is more complex than that of extreme temperatures, generally stratospheric aerosol injection is more effective in reducing tropical Rx5day, while solar dimming is more effective over extra-tropical regions.

The June 2018 PCIC Update includes the following stories: New on the Data Portal from the Hydrologic Impacts Theme: Gridded Meteorological Datasets, Updated Guidance for the Engineering Community, Climate Data for the Northwest Territories and Yukon, Agricultural Data Network Analysis, Renewed Climate Related Monitoring Program Agreement, Regional Assessment for Northeastern BC, Fraser Valley Extremes, New Projects, Staff Profile on Stephen Sobie and the Pacific Climate Seminar Series, as well as staff changes and publications.

Canada has experienced some of the most rapid warming on Earth over the past few decades with a warming rate about twice that of the global mean temperature since 1948. Long-term warming is observed in Canada’s annual, winter and summer mean temperatures, and in the annual coldest and hottest daytime and nighttime temperatures. The causes of these changes are assessed by comparing observed changes with climate model simulated responses to anthropogenic and natural (solar and volcanic) external forcings. Most of the observed warming of 1.7 °C increase in annual mean temperature during 1948–2012 [90% confidence interval (1.1°, 2.2 °C)] can only be explained by external forcing on the climate system, with anthropogenic influence being the dominant factor. It is estimated that anthropogenic forcing has contributed 1.0 °C (0.6°, 1.5 °C) and natural external forcing has contributed 0.2 °C (0.1°, 0.3 °C) to the observed warming. Up to 0.5 °C of the observed warming trend may be associated with low frequency variability of the climate such as that represented by the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) and North Atlantic oscillation (NAO). Overall, the influence of both anthropogenic and natural external forcing is clearly evident in Canada-wide mean and extreme temperatures, and can also be detected regionally over much of the country.