Preliminary study on reaction of mountain runoff to climate change in Urumqi River, China

Characteristics and trends of precipitation, temperature and runoff variation in the mountain watershed of Urumqi River basin in the past over 40 years were analyzed on basis of the measured data at the relational hydrological and weather stations in the area. The results show that the mountain temperature has significantly increased during the past 48 years; the increase of temperature in autumn was higher than other seasons. The annual precipitation varied with a slightly upward trend in the same period and the increase mainly appeared in summer and winter. The runoff showed an obvious increase trend; it is very sensitive to mountain precipitation and temperature. On the basis of the above study, we found that the increase trend in runoff was more significant than that in precipitation in the study area. That was the synactic results of variation of groundwater, ice-snow meltwater and precipitation caused by global climate change.