Abstract
The purpose of this study is to survey the impact of climate change on the runoff of Gharehsoo River in northwest of Iran. In this research the outputs of monthly precipitation and temperature data of PRECIS model, which is a regional climate model with 50 × 50 km resolution on the basis of B2 scenario, have been utilized for base (1961-1990) and future (2071-2100) periods. The output results of PRECIS model show that the average temperature of watershed increased up to 2°C - 5°C. In addition, future precipitation is more than the base precipitation on January, February, March, September and December. The observed data of 1996-2002 used for calibration of HSPF model and the data of 2003-2004 were used for HSPF validation. The present monthly patterns for precipitation and temperature were estimated using the geostatistical techniques and the future monthly patterns were retrieved by the combination of future monthly PRECIS data and monthly patterns of precipitation and temperature. Then, the base and future precipitation and temperature patterns were introduced to validate HSPF model for the simulation of monthly runoff in the base and future periods. The results show that in the future, the discharge of Gharehsoo River watershed decreases in all of the months. In addition, the peak discharge in the future period happens one month earlier, in April, because of increase of temperature and earlier beginning of snow melting season. Finally the sensitivity analysis was performed on the monthly runoff. The results showed that monthly discharge increases 0.3% - 35.6% and decreases 0.3% - 32.6% due to 20% increase and decrease of precipitation, respectively. In addition, 1°C and 2°C increase of temperature lead to 0% - 8% and 0.1% - 15% decrease of average monthly discharge, respectively.
Highlights
Climate change can influence the ecosystems, environment and water resources
After calibration and validation of Hydrological Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) model to the watershed, PRECIS model base and future data series is used as the input to HSPF model
The differences between monthly discharge of base and future periods in the warm months are more than the other months; this is because of increase of future temperature and evapotranspiration and decrease of future precipitation in the warm months in comparison with base data
Summary
Climate change can influence the ecosystems, environment and water resources. One of the most important impacts of climate change is the changes of regional and local available water. Vicuna et al [8] studied on the impacts of climate change scenarios in the north-central Chile in the first half of the 21st century. Their results showed an increase in temperature of about 3 ̊C - 4 ̊C and a reduction in precipitation of 10% - 30% during the first half of 21st century. Zarghami et al [9] used General Circulation Models (GCM) to predict the climate change. They used the three scenarios (A1B, A2 and B1) with the horizons 2020, 2055 and 2090. Their study revealed that average annual temperature will increase 2.3 ̊C and annual precipitation will decrease about 30% in the middle of
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