<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article" specific-use="SMUR" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-4911</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Changing snowmelt and glacier-melt contributions reshape hydrological dynamics and flood generation in a high-mountain headwater basin</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Qi</surname>
<given-names>Yu</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8278-3131</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhang</surname>
<given-names>Ting</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4975-0200</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kraaijenbrink</surname>
<given-names>Philip D. A.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0126-8602</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Liu</surname>
<given-names>Liu</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4915-206X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Deng</surname>
<given-names>Xiaoya</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Efficient Utilization of Agricultural Water Resources, College of Water Resources and Intelligence Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Water Security in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>21</day>
<month>09</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>31</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Yu Qi et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4911/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4911/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4911/egusphere-2026-4911.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4911/egusphere-2026-4911.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Climate warming has been reorganizing hydrological dynamics in high-mountain rivers by altering the relative contributions of snowmelt and glacier melt. However, inadequate representation of snow ablation processes can bias runoff-component partitioning and mislead the inferred roles of snowmelt and glacier melt in water availability and flooding. Here, we enhance the representation of snowpack dynamics in a cryosphere-hydrology model (SPHY-S) to quantify how changing snowmelt and glacier-melt contributions reshape flood regimes in the upper Yulongkashi River during historical (1980-2020) and future (2021-2050) periods. Results show that SPHY-S robustly reproduces observed snow-cover dynamics across monthly, seasonal, and interannual timescales, thereby improving the reliability of runoff-component estimates. By 2050, the relative contribution of snowmelt is projected to decrease by 2%-7% whereas that of glacier melt increases by 1%-6%, depending on the climate scenario. Under the high-emission scenario, glacier-melt runoff (increasing from 0.7 to 1.5 billion m&amp;sup3; yr⁻&amp;sup1;) will surpass snowmelt runoff (increasing from 0.9 to 1.2 billion m&amp;sup3; yr⁻&amp;sup1;) to become the dominant contributor. Annual streamflow is projected to increase by 37%-79% and flood frequency is projected to increase by 84%-105% by 2050, depending on the climate scenario, with floods shifting from snowmelt-driven to glacier-melt-driven under the high-emission scenario. The growing contribution of glacier melt to floods creates more sustained high flows, posing challenges for downstream reservoir operation and disaster mitigation. Our findings highlight that improved representation of snow processes is essential for reliable runoff partitioning and diagnosis of shifts in flood regimes, thereby supporting proactive water management strategies in climate-sensitive mountain rivers.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="31"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>52579080</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>