Assessment of Impact of Climate Change Using RRL AWBM Model

Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time, i.e., decades to millions of years. The climate changes can adversely impacts the climate sensitive sectors such as water resources, agriculture and ultimately livelihood of the people. The increase or decrease in temperature, rainfall and other climatic parameters due to climate change may affect the river discharge, flood, reservoir storages, ground water levels, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, crop production, sea levels, etc. Keeping this in view a study was conducted to assess the impact of climate change on river runoff in the Shipra river basin of madhya Pradesh. The effects of climate change can be assessed by detection of trend in climatic and hydrological variables over the long time period by number of statistical methods. In present study, trend analysis of long term annual rainfall of the Shipra river basin was carried out using mann-Kendall test. It involves the analysis of observed runoff data and modified runoff data for climate change condition using suitable tool like rainfall runoff model. In the current study the RRL aWBm model was calibrated and the parameters were set and the rainfall was incremented and decremented by 5% and 10% keeping all other parameters constant then the runoff was observed and the relation between simulated runoff of Shipra basin and incremented and decremented runoff was observed and the graph between them was plotted and thus it was concluded that if rainfall increases then the runoff also increases and if rainfall decreases then the runoff also decreases. The performance of the hydrological model in climate change impacts assessment is looked into by comparing the baseline flows under incremental scenarios, with the observed flows. The validated model when provided with the future climate variables, i.e. daily rainfall values as inputs, generated the future streamflows at the outlet of the basin. The impacts of climate change on the hydrology of the study area are then investigated by comparing the flows, PET, and water balance during the baseline (1990–2010). On the basis of this finding future planning for development of water resources in the Shipra river basin and in the basin of similar characteristics can be done.