Assessment of the hedging policy on reservoir operation for future drought conditions under climate change

Abstract

Reservoirs play a fundamental role in enhancing sustainable development and economic circumstances, especially in areas with limited water resources. Recently, experts in water resources management have been faced with global warming and climate change as two critical issues that are causing serious problems in water resources. Accordingly, the current study attempts to evaluate the future climate change impacts on agricultural reservoir operation. The results indicated an increase in mean long-term temperature, decreased reservoir’s inflow, and an increase in the agricultural water requirement for the Jarreh reservoir system in southwestern Iran, during the period of 2025–2054, under the RCP 8.5 scenario. The results also showed a decrease in reliability (37%) and an increase in vulnerability (9%) using standard operation policy (SOP) under future climate conditions. Due to the predicted drought conditions for the study area, a two-dimensional hedging policy is proposed to mitigate the negative effects of climate change. The results of the hedging model indicated an improvement in the performance of indices in comparison with the use of SOP under climate change impacts. Generally, by using the hedging policy, decreased vulnerability (24%) and reduced maximum deficiencies (14%) are expected for future climate changes.