Back to news
15 Nov 2016 | News

New Publication: Climate Change Impacts on Upper Indus Basin Hydrology

2 mins Read

70% Complete

The Indus is one of the most meltwater-dependent rivers on earth. It hosts a large, rapidly growing population, and the world’s largest irrigation scheme. Understanding the hydrology of the upper Indus basin is challenging. The Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalayan mountain ranges are difficult to access, making field measurements of the meteorological, glaciological and hydrological processes difficult. As a result, these processes are still poorly understood. To make things more complex, climate change projections for the Indus basin show a very large spread. The recent (open access) paper published in PLOS ONE presents hydrological projections for the 21st century in the upper Indus basin based on a cryospheric-hydrological model forced with an ensemble of downscaled General Circulation Model outputs.

Three methodological advances are introduced: (i) A new precipitation dataset that corrects for the underestimation of high-altitude precipitation is used. (ii) The model is calibrated using data on river runoff, snow cover and geodetic glacier mass balance. (iii) An advanced statistical downscaling technique that accounts for changes in precipitation extremes is used.

The projections indicate decreases in glacier melt contribution in favor of snow melt and rainfall-runoff contribution to stream flow in the upper Indus basin at the end of the 21st century.

The focus of the analysis in this study is not only on changes in sources of runoff and water availability, but also on changes in seasonality and hydrological extremes, which are still large unknowns in the upper Indus basin. The study concludes that the upper Indus basin faces a very uncertain future in terms of water availability towards the end of the 21st century. Despite the large uncertainties in future climate and water availability scenarios, basin-wide patterns and trends of intra-annual shifts in water availability are consistent across climate change scenarios. For the near future, these trends mainly consist of minor increases in summer flows combined with increased flows during other seasons. For the far future, the trends show decreases in summer flows combined with stronger increasing flows during the other seasons. Furthermore, increases in intensity and frequency of extreme discharges are found for most of the upper Indus basin and for most scenarios and models considered, implying increases in flooding events during the 21st century.

Population growth in combination with increasing standards of living and associated increases in energy and food production will continue to expand the downstream water and energy demand. This implies a growing dependency on uncertain future water resources, which calls for sound basin-wide adaptation strategies to be developed across sectors that take into account the changing demand and supply in the Indus basin as well as the uncertainties therein.

Analysis of future changes indicates increases in the frequency and magnitude of extreme flows for most of the upper Indus basin and most climate change scenarios.

Stay current

Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.

Sign Up

Relative content

Continue exploring this topic

29 Jul 2015 News
A practical lesson for Bhutanese farmers

As part of support for Rural Livelihoods and Climate Change Adaptation Programme (Himalica), a hands-on training on sustainable land management ...

When the levee breaks: Reducing GLOF risks through dam breach modelling

Given the Koshi basin’s susceptibility to disasters, many communities near the Koshi River are constantly at risk. In a bid ...

14 Jun 2016 News
World Environment Day 2016

The WED 2016 campaign aims to raise awareness of the far-reaching nature of wildlife crime. The slogan for this year’s ...

Enhancing Data Compilation and Management Skills

A two-day regional orientation on data compilation and management was organized at ICIMOD on 5-6 April 2016. About 15 participants, ...

10 Feb 2015 News
Inception workshop on Cryosphere Monitoring Programme – Bhutan held in Thimphu, Bhutan

The main focus of the programme is to build the capacity of national agencies including DHMS for long-term cryosphere monitoring ...

20 Jun 2017 Himalica
Himalica Contributes to the Local 12th Five-Year Plan for Tsirang, Bhutan

BOX 1: Climate-resilient technologies and good practices identfied from the Himalica Pilot site in Barshong for local 12th ...

3 May 2016 Himalica
Farmers Learn Modern Beekeeping

Beekeeping with Apis cerana is a common practice among the pilot households in Taplejung district of Nepal. Over one-third of the households ...

21 Jan 2020 News
Balancing hydropower development and freshwater ecosystem conservation in Nepal

Freshwater ecosystems such as lakes, rivers, streams, springs, and wetlands provide various direct and indirect services. They are a critical ...