Projection of water balance study due to climate change using CMIP6 GCMs scenarios in Mahi river basin, India

Abstract:

Climate change has valuable impacts on the earth water resources systems. Change of hydrological variables (water yield, surface runoff, and evapotranspiration) of a river basin due to climate change have crucial impacts on agricultural production, health, energy, livelihood, economy etc. The Mahi river is such a kind of important river, which lies in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat states in west India. The basin area and length of the river is 35,000 km² and 580 km. The major objective of the study is to assess changes in the future water balance by investigating the impact of climate change using a semi-distributed hydrological model such as SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) for the Mahi river. To carry out the assessment of climate change (precipitation, minimum, and maximum temperature) in future, the Global Climatic Models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) has been used for this study. The time scale is categorized as past period (1986-2005) and future period (2021-2040, 2041-2060, 2061-2080, and 2081-2100). The SWAT model is calibrated and validated using observed data. After that, change of water balance is analyzed in 32 sub-watersheds (SW) of the Mahi basin for various climate change scenarios. Water yield, surface runoff, and evapotranspiration will be increased due to increase of precipitation and temperature in the future.