Impact of climate change on streamflow of Melka Wakena catchment, Upper Wabi Shebelle sub-basin, south-eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

Abstract Climate change is becoming a global concern, dictating the water resource availability of a certain region. This study focuses on the impact of climate change on the streamflow of the Melka Wakena reservoir in the Upper Wabi Shebelle sub-basin using a Soil Water Analysis Tool (SWAT). The climate model variables (precipitation and temperature) are obtained from the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX-Africa) and applied under representative concentration pathway (RCP4.5) and (RCP8.5) scenarios. Bias correction was applied to the climate variables before transferring to the hydrological model (SWAT) to simulate discharge. The performance measures R2, NSE, and Percent Bias (PBIAS) for calibration and validation were 0.69, 0.65, and −5.10 and 0.65, 0.61, and −9.81, respectively. Streamflow was simulated for two consecutive periods from 2021 to 2050 and from 2051 to 2080 for both scenarios and compared with the base period from 1986 to 2015 to explore the impact of climate change on inflows to the reservoir. The result obtained showed that the precipitation was predicted to be mildly decreasing, whereas overall annual flow was projected to be insignificantly decreasing under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. The impact of climate change on the water resource of the study area was predicted to be a statistically insignificant reduction.