Water Tower of the Yellow River in a Changing Climate (Toward an Integrated Assessment)

The study presented in this book provides an integrated assessment of the spatial and temporal variability of both recent and future climate change impacts in the Yellow River source region (YRSR) with specific focus on extremes. This study has covered a wide range of topics and a number of relevant issues of hydrology, climate change and downscaling in mountain areas. It consists of four different topics from detecting contemporary hydro-climatic changes, comparing three different statistical downscaling methods, assessing elevation dependency of expected changes in temperature, and projecting future climate-induced hydrologic changes in the YRSR. This study makes a contribution toward an improved understanding of climate change impacts in the YRSR. The knowledge generated has important implications for water resources management in the Yellow River and can be instructive for climate change impacts studies in other mountain areas.