Assessment of Climate Change Impact on Snowmelt Runoff in Himalayan Region

Rohitashw Kumar, Saika Manzoor, Dinesh Kumar Vishwakarma, Nadhir Al-Ansari, Nand Lal Kushwaha, Ahmed Elbeltagi, Kallem Sushanth, Vishnu Prasad and Alban Kuriqi
Additional contact information
Rohitashw Kumar: College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Shalimar Campus, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir 190025, India
Saika Manzoor: College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Shalimar Campus, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir 190025, India
Dinesh Kumar Vishwakarma: Department of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, College of Technology, G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand 263145, India
Nadhir Al-Ansari: Civil, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Lulea University of Technology, 97187 Lulea, Sweden
Nand Lal Kushwaha: Division of Agricultural Engineering, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa Campus, New Delhi 110012, India
Ahmed Elbeltagi: Agricultural Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Mansoura University, Mansoura 35516, Egypt
Kallem Sushanth: Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, IIT–Kharagpur, West Bengal 721302, India
Vishnu Prasad: Water Technology Center, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 110012, India
Alban Kuriqi: CERIS, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, 1649-004 Lisbon, Portugal

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-23

Abstract: Under different climate change scenarios, the current study was planned to simulate runoff due to snowmelt in the Lidder River catchment in the Himalayan region. A basic degree-day model, the Snowmelt-Runoff Model (SRM), was utilized to assess the hydrological consequences of change in the climate. The performance of the SRM model during calibration and validation was assessed using volume difference (Dv) and coefficient of determination (R 2 ). The D v was found to be 11.7, −10.1, −11.8, 1.96, and 8.6 in 2009–2014, respectively, while the respective R 2 was 0.96, 0.92, 0.95, 0.90, and 0.94. The D v and R 2 values indicate that the simulated snowmelt runoff closely agrees with the observed values. The simulated findings were assessed under three different climate change scenarios: (a) an increase in precipitation by +20%, (b) a temperature rise of +2 °C, and (c) a temperature rise of +2 °C with a 20% increase in snow cover. In scenario (b), the simulated results showed that runoff increased by 53% in summer (April–September). In contrast, the projected increased discharge for scenarios (a) and (c) was 37% and 67%, respectively. The SRM efficiently forecasts future water supplies due to snowmelt runoff in high elevation, data-scarce mountain environments.

Keywords: GIS; Himalayan region; SRM model; simulation; snowmelt runoff; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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