Impact of Climate Change on River Flow Characteristics in the Western Himalayas

AGU Fall Meeting

Vivek Gupta

2022-12-01

Climate change is altering the hydrological response across different regions of the world. Changes in the nature of hydrological extremes such as droughts and floods have increased the uncertainty in water resource planning and management. It is crucial to develop a better understanding of how climate change impacts the hydrological behavior of Himalayan catchments. Thus, this work aims to analyze the impact of climate change on water availability across different western Himalayan catchments of Himachal Pradesh, India. The variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model has been set up at approximately 1 km spatial resolution and dynamic dimension search (DDS) algorithm has been used to calibrate the model to simulate the stream flow and soil moisture reliably. CMIP6 climate data have been utilized for two different shared socioeconomic scenarios (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5) to analyze the impact of climate change on water availability under different development pathways. Results of this study indicate that climate change would alter the flow regime of most of the western Himalayan catchments . We also found that both low and high flow regime are being affected due to climate change. The results of this study will have implications for water resource management, flood and drought management, infrastructure design, and hazard and risk quantification.