Abstract
Climate change has significant effects on societies and ecosystems. Due to the strong link between climate and the hydrological cycle, water resources is one of the most affected fields by climate change. It is of great importance to investigate climate change effects on streamflows by producing future streamflow projections under different scenarios to create adaptation measures and mitigate potential impacts of climate change. The Upper Campaspe Catchment (UCC), located at North Central Victoria in Australia, is a significant catchment as it provides a large portion of total inflow to the Lake Eppalock Reservoir, which supplies irrigation to the Campaspe Irrigation district and urban water to Bendigo, Heathcote, and Ballarat cities. In this study, climate change effects on monthly streamflows in the UCC was investigated using high resolution future climate data from CSIRO and MIROC climate models in calibrated IHACRES hydrological model. The IHACRES model was found to be very successful to simulate monthly streamflow in UCC. Remarkable streamflow reductions were projected based on the climate input from both models (CSIRO and MIROC). According to the most optimistic scenario (with the highest projected streamflows) by the MIROC-RCP4.5 model in near future (2035–2064), the Upper Campaspe River will completely dry out from January to May. The worst scenario (with the lowest streamflow projection) by the CSIRO-RCP8.5 model in the far future (2075–2104) showed that streamflows will be produced only for three months (July, August, and September) throughout the year. Findings from this study indicated that climate change will have significant adverse impacts on reservoir inflow, operation, water supply, and allocation in the study area.
Highlights
Climate change affects cities and the built environment, coasts, agriculture, water resources, and natural ecosystems in Australia and all over the world
It is of great importance to investigate climate change effects on streamflows by producing future streamflow projections under different scenarios to create adaptation measures and mitigate potential impacts of climate change
To the knowledge of the authors, this study presents the first monthly streamflow projection for both near (2035–2064) and far (2075–2104) future in the Upper Campaspe Catchment (UCC) using projected climate data with a high spatial resolution (5 × 5 km) from the Victorian Climate Change Pro-Hydrology 2021, 8, 108
Summary
Climate change affects cities and the built environment, coasts, agriculture, water resources, and natural ecosystems in Australia and all over the world. Among those fields, water resources is one of the most affected ones due to the strong relationship between climate and water resources [1,2]. Variations in precipitation amount and timing along with alterations in other climate parameters result in changes in streamflow influencing downstream reservoir inflows and operations [5]. There are several studies investigating climate change effects on streamflows across the world. Many of those studies reported decreases in streamflows in future. D’Agostino et al [6] reported a 16–23% decrease in streamflow in southern Italy by 2050
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