El nino-southern oscillation and the surface hydrology of chile: A window on the future?

Abstract

There is still some difficulty in the use of GCM outputs as inputs to models of hydrologic extremes under various scenarios of climatic change. The analysis of hydrologic characteristics under analogous climatic conditions may provide some better or corroborative insights into likely future behaviour. In this case the response of elements of the surface hydrology of Chile to changes in climate induced by El Niño-Southern Oscillation are detailed and compared to streamflow characteristics simulated for Californian rivers using outputs from several GCMs. There are considerable parallels between the observed and simulated changes, suggesting that ENSO conditions may provide a far better analog to climatic change in California than the conditions of the decade of the 1930s which had been used previously. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.