Assessment of Future Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources of Upper Sind River Basin, India Using SWAT Model

Abstract

A study has been conducted to assess future climate change impacts on water resources of the Upper Sind River Basin using Soil Water Assessment Tool. Sequential uncertainty fitting (SUFI-2) algorithm has been applied for model calibration and uncertainty analysis. Monthly observed stream flows matched well with simulated flows with respect to p-factor, d-factor, Correlation coefficient and Nash-Sutcliffe coefficients with values of 0.73, 0.42, 0.82, 0.80 during calibration (1992-2000) and 0.42, 0.36, 0.96, 0.93 during validation (2001-2005) respectively. PRECIS generated outputs under IPCC A1B Scenarios for Indian conditions corresponding to the baseline (1961-1990), midcentury (2021-2050) and endcentury (2071-2098); extracted by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune (India) have been used for the study. It has been found from the model results that the average annual streamflow could increase by 16.4 % for the midcentury and a significant increase of 93.5 % by the endcentury. The results also indicate that streamflow may rise drastically in monsoon season, but will decrease in non-monsoon season due to the projected future climate change. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.