| The Effects of Simulated Climate Change on the Hydrology of Major River Basins | |||||||||||||||||
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| maximum streamflow, f m , in the year (the flood). Figure 1: Comparison of components of global hydrological cycle from the control and GHG+A simulations with observations. All values in 10 3 km 3 /year. Figure 1 shows that the global hydrological cycle intensifies by about 3% as measured by the increase in globally averaged precipitation and evaporation for the GHG+A simulation. Over land, the precipitation decreases by 2% and evapotranspiration increases by 2%. Over the oceans, precipitation and evaporation increase by 5% and 3% respectively. Both the decrease in precipitation and increase in evapotranspiration over land act to reduce the freshwater water transport to the oceans which decreases by 14% (and similarly the vapour transport from the oceans to the land). Simulated runoff, and thus river discharge decreases in a warmer world. Figure 2 displays the observed mean annual discharge, f | |||||||||||||||||
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