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Response of two selected river basins from Eastern and Western Himalayan regions to climate change in terms of streamflow and snow parameters

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Abstract

The present study is carried out in the Mago river basin and Alaknanda river basin representing the Eastern Himalaya and the Western Himalaya, respectively. The future streamflow under changing climatic condition in these Himalayan basins was simulated for RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 climatic scenarios using spatially distributed snowmelt runoff model (SDSRM), a temperature index model under the impact of climate change on snow parameters. Projected temperature and precipitation from NASA’s Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections (NEX–GDDP) data set were used. The projected snow parameters, namely, snow depth, snow water equivalent (SWE), and snow cover (%) of five global climatic models (GCMs) were downloaded from Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCDMI) web portal. To analyse the impact of climate change with reference to baseline period (1986–2005), the future period of three time slices comprising of 20 equal years, i.e., 30s (2020–2039), 60s (2050–2069), and 90s (2080–2099) were considered. The projected snow parameters from climatic models were bias corrected using equidistant quantile mapping (EDQM) method before employing it as an input in SDSRM for simulating future runoff. When compared with the baseline period, all the snow parameters in both the river basins were projected to decrease with the highest decline in the 90s under RCP 8.5. The result obtained from this study suggested that the summer seasons could get wetter and the winter season drier in the future in both the river basin. The streamflow in the future was projected to increase as we move from near (30s) to far (90s) future under both RCPs. The highest change in streamflow was projected in the 90s for both the RCPs. In both river basins, a relative increase (> 13% under RCP 4.5; > 36% under RCP 8.5) in streamflow were projected with reference to baseline.

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Software availability

SDSRM will be made available on request.

Availability of data and materials

The Central Water Commission (CWC) of India has discharge data that supports the findings of this study. The availability of these data, which were used under licence for this work, is subject to restrictions. With the consent of CWC Headquarter in New Delhi, these data are available from the authors. All other data used in this study are openly available in public domain.

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Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the help, encouragement and financial support provided by the Climate Change Programme (CCP), Strategic Programmes, Large Initiatives and Coordinated Action Enabler (SPLICE), Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India, Govt. of India under National Mission on Sustaining Himalayan Ecosystem (NMSHE) through Grant nos. DST/CCP/NHC/154/2018 and DST/CCP/MRDP/184/2019.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural Engineering, North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Nirjuli (Itanagar), Arunachal Pradesh, 791109, India

    L. G. Kiba, N. Chiphang, P. Mishra, A. Bandyopadhyay & A. Bhadra

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  1. L. G. Kiba
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  2. N. Chiphang
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  3. P. Mishra
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  4. A. Bandyopadhyay
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  5. A. Bhadra
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Contributions

LGK: data acquisition, data preparation, methodology, original draft preparation. NC: model coding. PM: data preparation, result verification. AB: supervision, manuscript editing, communicating, grant recipient. AB: conceptualization, data acquisition, supervision, visualization, grant recipient.

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Correspondence to A. Bandyopadhyay.

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Kiba, L.G., Chiphang, N., Mishra, P. et al. Response of two selected river basins from Eastern and Western Himalayan regions to climate change in terms of streamflow and snow parameters. Environ Earth Sci 82, 393 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-023-11086-9

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