Future hydrology and hydrological extremes under climate change in Asian river basins

Abstract

The diverse impacts of anthropogenic climate change in the spatiotemporal distribution of global freshwater are generally addressed through global scale studies, which suffer from uncertainties arising from coarse spatial resolution. Multi-catchment, regional studies provide fine-grained details of these impacts but remain less explored. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of climate change impacts on the hydrology of 19 river basins from different geographical and climatic conditions in South and Southeast Asia. We find that these two regions will get warmer (1.5 to 7.8 °C) and wetter (− 3.4 to 46.2%) with the expected increment in river flow (− 18.5 to 109%) at the end of the twenty-first century under climate change. An increase in seasonal hydro-climatic extremes in South Asia and the rising intensity of hydro-climatic extremes during only one season in Southeast Asia illustrates high spatiotemporal variability in the impact of climate change and augments the importance of similar studies on a larger scale for broader understanding.