HYDROLOGIC EFFECTS OF CLIMATIC-CHANGE IN WEST-CENTRAL CANADA

The paper examines the impact of climatic change on the timing of the spring runoff event. Impact detection is accomplished using a non-parametric statistical test for trend that is applied to the assembled data sets. The application of the approach is to a set of 84 natural rivers from the west-central region of Canada. The results indicate that there are a greater number of rivers that exhibit earlier spring runoff than can be attributed to chance occurrence. The observed impacts on the timing of spring runoff are more prevalent in the recent portion of the data record, which is consistent with what one would expect if the impacts are a result of greenhouse gas induced climatic change.