Hydrological regime in a model High Arctic catchment (Bratteggdalen, Svalbard) under warming and precipitation rise

Climate change is impacting water flow worldwide and is particularly important for High Arctic basins. Thawing permafrost and melting of glaciers, as well as higher air temperatures and precipitation, affect hydrological regimes and retention in polar basins. However, knowledge is limited as regards long-term changes in discharge from catchments in the High Arctic. Our aim was to evaluate the impact of local conditions on hydrological regime in glacial-fluvio-lacustrine model system in the High Arctic. We used mainly hydrological and meteorological data from 9 summer seasons (June-September) between 2005 and 2019 extracted from the entire database (16 seasons in 1972-2019). Wide range of statistical methods was applied including bootstrapping, random forest and multiple regression, to determine the coupling between hydrometeorological parameters (air and water temperature, discharge, sunshine duration, precipitation). The hydrological regime exhibits a distinct seasonal pattern with a pronounced, snowmelt-derived peak (maximum discharge) in the early part of the season (June-July) affected by precipitation. In the late part of the season (August-September), low-intermediate discharge is primarily governed by air temperatures and, only secondarily by precipitation. The hydrometeorological coupling in August-September is stronger that in June-July. The statistically significant increase in air temperature (0.45°C per decade) in August-September during 1979-2018 makes this part of the season important in terms of long-term changes in the permafrost-underlain catchment. Thawing of the permafrost active layer thaw is clearly reflected by air–temperature-dependent low-to-intermediate discharge.

Database consists of following data obtained from long-term discharge analyses: daily discharge data at the gauging station from 1983-2019 (1983-2019_Brattegg_River_Discharge_v1.csv), daily water stage data from 1972-1983 (1972-1983 _ Brattegg_River_Water_Stage_v1.csv), daily water level at gauging station and outflow from Bratteggbreen from 2017 (2017_Brattegg_River_water_stage_gauging_station_Bratteggbreen_v1.csv).

This study is a contribution to the National Science Centre projects: 2021/43/D/ST10/00687 (SONATA17 funding scheme, ŁS), 2020/39/I/ST10/02129 (OPUS-LAP funding scheme, MB), 2017/27/B/ST10/01269 (OPUS funding scheme, KM), and SONATA 2015/19/D/ST10/02869 (SONATA funding scheme, MK). For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission. ŁS was also supported from the Bekker Programme (award no. BPN/BEK/2021/1/00431) at the Polish National Agency for Scientific Exchange. The study was carried out by DI, EL as part of scientific activity of the Centre for Polar Studies (University of Silesia in Katowice) with the use of research and logistic equipment (monitoring and measuring equipment, sensors, multiple AWS, GNSS receivers, snowmobiles and other supporting equipment) of the Polar Laboratory of the University of Silesia in Katowice. MW and HM acknowledge the statutory fund of University of Wrocław for suport during fieldwork in 2005-2010.