Evaluating water availability under changing climate scenarios in the Woybo catchment, Ethiopia

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate water availability under changing climate scenarios in the Woybo catchment, Ethiopia. The bias-corrected outputs of multiple climate models’ ensemble mean were employed for the 2050 and 2080s against the reference period (1976–2005) under representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for both RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. A semi-distributed physically based Hydrologic Engineering Center of Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) was used to perform rainfall–runoff simulation. The projected rainfall and temperatures of the watershed will increase in the far future. The predictions from ensemble means of multiple climate models indicated that rainfall of the watershed will likely increase by 25% in the 2050s and 19% in the 2080s under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, respectively. The discharge projection for the ensemble mean of all climate models shows an increment up to 20 and 19% under RCP 4.5 and RCP8.5, respectively, in the 2050s, whereas it will decline up to 15 and 28% in 2080s, under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, respectively. This research plays a great role to reduce the impacts of changing climate for sustainable water resources management.