Climate Change and Hydrologic Models: A Review of Existing Gaps and Recent Research Developments

Global atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) have been developed to simulate the present climate and used to predict future climatic change. While GCMs demonstrate significant skill at the continental and hemispheric spatial scales and incorporate a large proportion of the complexity of the global system, they are inherently unable to represent local subgrid-scale features and dynamics. The existing gap and the methodologies for narrowing the gap between GCMs' ability and the need of hydrological modelers are reviewed in this paper. Following the discussion of the advantages and deficiencies of various methods, the challenges for future studies of the hydrological impacts of climate change are identified. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1999