Meteorological trends over Satluj River Basin in Indian Himalaya under climate change scenarios

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Temperature and precipitation distributions depend on variable topography and heterogeneous landuse/landcover in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR). It imparts a major concern for hydrological, glaciological modelling, dam structure assessment, etc. Thus, there is an inherent requirement of robust information for climate impact studies over the topographical variable and landuse heterogenous region in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR). In particular, the importance of bias corrections become critically important over Himalayan river basins, in which model outputs with the corresponding in-situ observations are used for improving the model distribution. These improved details in present and future, as well, are important to carry out the climate change impact studies at basin scale for hydrological, glaciological, climatological studies, etc. Thus, in the present study firstly, model fields are bias corrected with the corresponding in-situ observations. And then trends in these bias corrected data is compared with the corresponding in-situ observations. These assessment of present and future changes in temperature and precipitation over Satluj River Basin (SRB) located in the western Himalayas is illustrated. Model fields are considered from a Regional climate model (REMO) from Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment-South Asia (CORDEX-SA) in three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), i.e., 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5 W/m2. These projections are bias corrected using distributed quantile mapping. The precipitation (temperature) bias correction is performed using the distributed quantile mapping on the gamma (normal) distribution. The standard trend statistics is applied for quantitative assessment. A good capture of bias correction in temperature and precipitation is illustrated. Efficient bias removal is depicted in cumulative distribution curve (CDF) at individual station. Trend analysis shows that highest rate of precipitation decrement at low altitude station (Kasol) with the rate of −6.362 mm/year in RCP 8.5. Over the SRB highest rate of temperature increment is seen at highest altitude station (Kaza) with the rate of 0.084°C/year in RCP 8.5. On an average, fall in precipitation and increase in temperature with >99% confidence level in RCP 8.5 is seen. In addition, intensity lowers in other lower RCPs. The study sums up with the efficacy of CORDEX-SA REMO model in capturing present and future change in temperature and precipitation over the SRB in western Himalayas using the bias correction.