Data-driven prediction of urban hydrological transitions in the Contiguous United States
Abstract
Recent studies of urban hydrology need to address unprecedented challenges in the face of two major drivers of global changes, viz., urbanization and climate changes. It is therefore imperative to detect critical, often catastrophic, transitions in the urban hydrological system, due to abrupt climate shifts or emergent hydroclimatic patterns in the earth system. In this study, we identified the critical transitions of hydrological processes including precipitation and potential evapotranspiration, in urban areas of the contiguous United States (CONUS). These early-warning signals include conventional statistical measures as well as system-based network parameters. Statistically, the increasing trends of autocorrelation and variance can be detected as early-warning signals prior to the emergence of critical transitions. Furthermore, by applying the network theory approach, we find that the topology of urban precipitation network across the CONUS showed similar early-warning signals when approaching the critical transitions in the 1990s, signifying the enhanced synchronization among the urban precipitation patterns. These network topological parameters can also shed new lights on structure-dynamic interactions in the complex hydrological system.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFM.H25J1150Y