281-Climate Change and its Impact on the Kangsabati Basin Using Swat Model

Abstract

This paper attempts to quantify the effect of climate change over the Kangsabati basin in Bankura, West Bengal. A very well calibrated (R2 = 0.9968, NSE = 0.91) physically distributed hydrological model, Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) uses futuristic climatic data from HadRM2 in order to predict the future water availability scenario of one of Bengal's most physically diversified regions. SWAT predicts the impact of land management practices on water, sediment and agricultural chemical yields in complex watershed with varying soil, landuse and management conditions over long periods of time. General Circulation Models are widely accepted as the primary tool used for analysis of potential increased green house gases and more recently, aerosols. Two outputs of these models are temperature and precipitation. Water availability in the basin under changed climate scenario was evaluated using the projected daily precipitation for 2041-2050 as supplied by IITM, Pune. There work Is based on the model HadRM2, the Regional Model of Hadley Centre for Climatic Prediction, UK at a resolution of 0.44° latitude X 0.44° longitude.