Investigation into the Effects of Climate Change for the Ajay River Basin using Hydroinformatics

A very exhaustive study was conducted on the Ajay River catchment under changed climate scenario from soil moisture accounting parameters. An attempt has been made to quantify the impact of climate change on the water resources of the Ajay river catchment outlet at Natunhat, West Bengal. A distributed hydrological model, HEC HMS (HEC HMS Version 2.2.2, 2000) has been exercised over the river basin under changed climate scenario. Projected data used in the model was generated in transient experiments by the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, U.K (Hulme and Vinar, 1995), at a resolution of 0.44° latitude X 0.44° longitude grid points, has been obtained from Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, India.

This paper considers input parameters of four catchments of the Ajay River basin, spread over West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar in eastern India namely, Natunhat and Gheropara (West Bengal), Jamtara (Jharkhand) and Sikatia (Bihar) in order to generate soil moisture relationships from 2040–2050. Water Availability status for 2040–2050 has been accomplished by computing soil moisture properties such as canopy overflow, soil infiltration and ET which have been determined and illustrated over the mentioned period of ten years.

The study uses the HadRm daily weather data to determine the control (present) and GHG (future) water availability in space and time. A total of 15 years of simulation spanning the entire Ajay River catchment has been conducted. Five years were devoted to control (present) 1997–2001 and the remaining 10 years (2040–2050) devoted to GHG (future) climate scenario. Seasonal shift of stream flow pattern, reduction of peak flow and water stressed condition have been observed.