Abstract
Climate-influenced changes in hydrology affect water-food-energy security that may impact up to two billion people downstream of the High Mountain Asia (HMA) region. Changes in water supply affect energy, industry, transportation, and ecosystems (agriculture, fisheries) and as a result, also affect the region's social, environmental, and economic fabrics. Sustaining the highly interconnected food-energy-water nexus (FEWN) will be a fundamental and increasing challenge under a changing climate regime. High variability in topography and distribution of glaciated and snow-covered areas in the HMA region, and scarcity of high resolution (in-situ) data make it difficult to model and project climate change impacts on individual watersheds. We lack basic understanding of the spatial and temporal variations in climate, surface impurities in snow and ice such as black carbon and dust that alter surface albedo, and glacier mass balance and dynamics. These knowledge gaps create challenges in predicting where and when the impact of changes in river flow will be the most significant economically and ecologically. In response to these challenges, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) established the High Mountain Asia Team (HiMAT) in 2016 to conduct research to address knowledge gaps. This paper summarizes some of the advances HiMAT made over the past 5 years, highlights the scientific challenges in improving our understanding of the hydrology of the HMA region, and introduces an integrated assessment framework to assess the impacts of climate changes on the FEWN for the HMA region. The framework, developed under a NASA HMA project, links climate models, hydrology, hydropower, fish biology, and economic analysis. The framework could be applied to develop scientific understanding of spatio-temporal variability in water availability and the resultant downstream impacts on the FEWN to support water resource management under a changing climate regime.
Highlights
The World Economic Forum identifies water crises, energy price fluctuations, and climate change as the top three risks the world faces in the decade
This paper summarizes some of the advances High Mountain Asia Team (HiMAT) made over the past 5 years, highlights the scientific challenges in improving our understanding of the hydrology of the High Mountain Asia (HMA) region, and introduces an integrated assessment framework to assess the impacts of climate changes on the food-energy-water nexus (FEWN) for the HMA region
We show that Snow cover fraction (SCF) from newer sensors like VIIRS are as accurate as MODIS (Rittger et al, 2021) and will provide data well into the future with multiple instruments launched by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and NOAA
Summary
The World Economic Forum identifies water crises, energy price fluctuations, and climate change as the top three risks the world faces in the decade. These drivers include spatial and temporal variations in climate, surface impurities such as black carbon and dust that alter surface albedo, and glacier mass balance and dynamics These knowledge gaps create challenges in predicting where and when the impact of change in river flow will be the most significant economically and ecologically. We focus on the major challenges of high resolution hydrologic modeling in HMA in the context of FEWN security and vulnerability, in (1) understanding the significant physical drivers of hydrological processes at sub-basin levels; (2) aggregating individual streamflow contributors into a comprehensive assessment of total water budgets for every catchment; (3) projection of hydrologic flow under various climate scenarios, and (4) translating the impacts of changed hydrology into food and energy production, as well as in the maintenance of biodiversity at sub-basin levels. We discuss the associated challenges in predicting changes in river flow at sub-basin level where decisions made affect FEWN security
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