Future hydrological and ecological droughts projection of the Korean Peninsula with the combined climate and land use scenarios

Damage from drought is consistently increasing around the world due to global climate change. It is expected that the Korean Peninsula will be exposed to increasing drought risk. This study estimates the effect of climate and land use changes on extreme drought using one of the land surface modeling system, i.e., Weather Research and Forecasting and the Model Hydrological Modeling system (WRF-Hydro). We use the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 2.6 and 8.5 as future climate scenarios for the historical period (1986-2005), the near future (2031-2050) and the far future (2081-2100). In addition, we use land use scenario based on the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) together with the RCPs. The grid-based runoff and net primary production (NPP) simulated with the WRF-Hydro for the historical period are compared with observed data from Korea Water Resources Corporation and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, respectively. A threshold level approach is adopted to identify hydrological and ecological droughts with runoff and NPP, respectively. In turn, we assess drought statistics such as drought frequency, duration of drought, and mean deficit and different scenarios and thus identify potential future hydrological and ecological droughts risks in the Korean Peninsula.

Acknowledgement : This work was supported by Korea Environment Industry& Technology Institute(KEITI) through Climate Change program, funded by Korea Ministry of Environment(MOE)(project 2018001310001)