Research Article
Investigation into the Effects of Climatic Change on
Temperature, Rainfall, and Runoff of the Doroudzan
Catchment, Iran, Using the Ensemble Approach of
CMIP3 Climate Models
Abolghasem Sayadi ,
1
Nasser Taleb Beydokhti ,
2
Mohsen Najarchi,
3
and Mohammad Mahdi Najafizadeh
4
1
Department of Civil Engineering, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran
2
Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
3
Department of Civil Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University,
Arak, Iran
4
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran
Correspondence should be addressed to Nasser Taleb Beydokhti; nassertaleb@gmail.com
Received 17 August 2018; Revised 16 December 2018; Accepted 6 February 2019; Published 11 March 2019
Academic Editor: Panagiotis Nastos
Copyright © 2019 Abolghasem Sayadi et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
is study investigated the effects of climatic changes on temperature, rainfall, and runoff in the Doroudzan catchment in the
northeast of Fars province, Iran. Temperature and rainfall changes in three periods including 2011–2030, 2046–2065, and
2080–2099 were downscaled and studied using 15 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 3 (CMIP3) climatic models,
under three scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions A2, B1, and A1B, from the database of the LARS-WG model. e difference in
the amount of changes in temperature and rainfall in these three periods and the observational amounts under the 15 models
indicated the uncertainty of the changes values. To reduce this uncertainty and limit the results to the management and planning
of water resources, ensemble approach was considered. For the preparation of the ensemble approach, the parameters from the
files of the 15-model scenarios were averaged so that a climatic ensemble model could be obtained for each period. en, the
runoffs of the next three periods, under the second approach and three emission scenarios, were produced using the feedforwad
neural network. e results indicated an increase in the average monthly maximum temperature and the minimum temperature
in all three periods under the three scenarios. e results also showed a decrease in the rainfall in the early months of the year as
well as an increase in the rainfall in the spring in most scenarios. Generally, the average annual rainfall in all these three periods
under the climatic ensemble model, and three emission scenarios showed a reduction in the average annual rainfall in the three
periods. e maximum amount of reduction was in 2080–2099 (101mm) under the scenario B1. Besides, a reduction occurred in
the average runoff of the catchment under three ensemble models and the emission scenario in all three periods, as compared to
the average of the long-term observational values in most years.
1. Introduction
Climatic changes and management of the existing water
resources have recently been a serious challenge worldwide.
Climatic changes caused by the increase of greenhouse
gasses in the earth’s atmosphere result in the rise of
temperature and reduction of rainfall along with drought
and devastating floods in many parts of the world including
Iran. Increased temperature leads to the enhanced surface
water evaporation and water consumption; this, concomi-
tant with the reduction of rainfall and surface water re-
sources, can cause many problems for human societies. e
Hindawi
Advances in Meteorology
Volume 2019, Article ID 6357912, 16 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/6357912