Modeling the hydrological response to climate change: experiences from two south-central Chilean watersheds (original) (raw)
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Royal Society Open Science, 2020
The Upper Indus Basin (UIB) is a major source of supplying water to different areas because of snow and glaciers melt and is also enduring the regional impacts of global climate change. The expected changes in temperature, precipitation and snowmelt could be reasons for further escalation of the problem. Therefore, estimation of hydrological processes is critical for UIB. The objectives of this paper were to estimate the impacts of climate change on water resources and future projection for surface water under different climatic scenarios using soil and water assessment tool (SWAT). The methodology includes: (i) development of SWAT model using land cover, soil and meteorological data; (ii) calibration of the model using daily flow data from 1978 to 1993; (iii) model validation for the time 1994–2003; (iv) bias correction of regional climate model (RCM), and (v) utilization of bias-corrected RCM for future assessment under representative concentration pathways RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 for m...
Journal of Hydrometeorology, 2015
The mountain regions of the Hindu Kush, Karakoram, and Himalayas (HKH) are considered Earth’s “third pole,” and water from there plays an essential role for downstream populations. The dynamics of glaciers in Karakoram are complex, and in recent decades the area has experienced unchanged ice cover, despite rapid decline elsewhere in the world (the Karakoram anomaly). Assessment of future water resources and hydrological variability under climate change in this area is greatly needed, but the hydrology of these high-altitude catchments is still poorly studied and little understood. This study focuses on a particular watershed, the Shigar River with the control section at Shigar (about 7000 km2), nested within the upper Indus basin and fed by seasonal melt from two major glaciers (Baltoro and Biafo). Hydrological, meteorological, and glaciological data gathered during 3 years of field campaigns (2011–13) are used to set up a hydrological model, providing a depiction of instream flows,...
Modelling climate change impact on water resources of the Upper Indus Basin
Journal of Water and Climate Change, 2021
Climate change has implications for water resources by increasing temperature, shifting precipitation patterns and altering the timing of snowfall and glacier melt, leading to shifts in the seasonality of river flows. Here, the Soil & Water Assessment Tool was run using downscaled precipitation and temperature projections from five global climate models (GCMs) and their multi-model mean to estimate the potential impact of climate change on water balance components in sub-basins of the Upper Indus Basin (UIB) under two emission (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and future (2020–2050 and 2070–2100) scenarios. Warming of above 6 °C relative to baseline (1974–2004) is projected for the UIB by the end of the century (2070–2100), but the spread of annual precipitation projections among GCMs is large (+16 to −28%), and even larger for seasonal precipitation (+91 to −48%). Compared to the baseline, an increase in summer precipitation (RCP8.5: +36.7%) and a decrease in winter precipitation were projected ...
2015
An agro-based country, Pakistan is largely dependent on the Indus basin irrigation system (IBIS), one of the largest irrigation networks in the world, mainly contributed by snow- and glacier-melt runoff from Indus River and its tributaries. A significant proportion of water in the Jhelum River is contributed by its snow- and glacier-fed sub-catchments situated in the Himalayan and Pir Panjal ranges along with monsoon rainfall from low-altitude regions. This study presents the change in snow cover dynamics and its impact on the hydrological behaviour of the catchment, water availability under climate change scenarios in high-altitude scarcely gauged (transboundary nature) catchment and subsequently its impact on hydropower generation at Mangla Dam and downstream canal system through operational management of the Mangla Reservoir. The remotely sensed data products such as MODIS snow cover, TRMM and APHRODITE are utilized, moreover, the climate change investigations are carried out by ...
Journal of Water and Climate Change, 2018
Evaluation of the impacts of prevailing climate change on rivers and water resources is significantly important in order to successfully manage water resources, particularly in snow-fed and glacier-fed catchments. The basic aim of this research was to assess the impacts of climatic variability on Astore and Hunza river-flows by employing long-term in-situ hydro-meteorological data. Times-series analysis of high- and low-altitude station data revealed consistent summer cooling, and warming in winter and spring seasons in both Karakoram and western Himalayan basins of Hunza and Astore, respectively. The intensity of these changes was not found to be identical in both basins, i.e. Hunza depicts slightly higher summer cooling rates and slightly lower annual, winter and spring warming rates as compared to Astore. Subsequently, the significant increase in annual precipitation of Hunza was also not found to be identical with Astore precipitation, which shows only a slight increase of preci...