Impact of Climate Change on Runoff Prediction in Ogbese River Watershed

Abstract

Increased rainfall amounts are projected in the humid southern parts of Nigeria due to climate change. The consequence of higher rainfall in future years would result to higher peak runoffs and flood stages in streams in these parts. The focus of this study is to simulate peak runoff at the outlet of Ogbese river watershed for future years of 2030, 2040, 2050 and 2060. Local twenty years (2000-2019) historical rainfall depths were used to statically downscale General Circulation Model outputs in the future for RCP 4.5 climate scenario. Downscaled rainfall depths were inputted in HEC-HMS model version 4.2 for rainfall-runoff simulation. The watershed was delineated with DEM in ArcGIS while four land use and land cover classifications were extracted with QGIS. Maximum rainfall depths projected in years 2030, 2040, 2050 and 2060 were 38.5mm/hr, 39mm/hr, 42mm/hr and 46mm/hr respectively. Peak runoff discharge simulated for RCP 4.5 climate scenario in years 2030, 2040, 2050 and 2060 are 1771m3/s, 1826 m3/s, 1897 m3/s and 2200 m3/s respectively. This represents 24.2% increase peak discharge between 2030 and 2060. Land area delineated for the catchment is 1946.2 km2. The LULC classification areas for urban area, forest, rock outcrop and bare land are 81.59 km2, 1721.84 km2, 146.27 km2 and 4.11 km2 respectively. The soil types are sandy clay loam (92.51 %), sandy loam (6.84 %), and clay (0.65 %). Curve Number and Initial abstraction parameter values are 70.27 and 2.89 respectively. Keywords- Climate change, GCM, HEC-HMS , Ogbese river, Peak runoff