Theme-II-2-Climate variability analysis on flow duration curve of a large Himalayan river.

Abstract

The impact of climate change is projected to have different effects within and between countries. Climate change is likely to threaten food production, increase water stress and decrease its availability, result in sea level rise. Any adverse impact on water availability due to recession of glaciers, decrease in rainfall and increased flooding will affect the livelihood of large population. Information about the change is required on global, regional and basin scales for variety of purposes. In this study, the historical daily runoff has been simulated for the Chenab river basin up to Salal Dam gauging site using a simple conceptual snowmelt model (SNOWMOD) based on the temperature index (degree-day) approach. After simulation of flow this model is used to study the impact of plausible hypothetical scenarios of temperature on daily flow duration curve of the Chenab river basin. The steeper slope of flow duration curves indicate that streamflow is fed by direct runoff and there is negligible amount of storage in the basin. The flow exceeded 50% of the time (460 m3/s in 1996) would be exceeded 60% of the time under a warming of 2°C.