climate change an water resources of Iran

Impact of climate change on renewable water resources of Iran

Climate change impacts on water resource of Iran

As water resources become further stressed due to increasing levels of societal demand, understanding the effect of climate change on various water cycle components is of strategic importance in managing this essential resource. In this project, we used a hydrologic model of Iran to study the impact of future climate on the country's water resources. Future climate scenarios for periods of 2010–2040 and 2070–2100 were generated from the Canadian Global Coupled Model (CGCM 3.1) for scenarios A1B, B1, and A2, which were downscaled for 37 climate stations across the country. The hydrologic model was then applied to these periods to analyze the effect of future climate on precipitation, blue water, green water, and wheat yield across the country. For future scenarios, we found that wet regions of the country will generally receive more rainfall while dry regions will receive less. In addition, analysis of daily rainfall intensities indicated more frequent and larger-intensity floods in the wet regions and more prolonged droughts in the dry regions. When aggregated to provincial levels, the differences in the predictions due to the three future scenarios were smaller than the uncertainty in the hydrologic model. However, at the subbasin level, the three climate scenarios produced quite different results in the dry regions of the country, although the results in the wet regions were similar.

Comparison of the number of wet days between historic and future climate conditions in wet regions of the country. In these graphs a wet day is defined as a day with precipitation ≥50 mm.

Comparison of the number of wet days between historic and future climate conditions in dry regions of the country. In these graphs a wet day is defined as a day with precipitation ≥2 mm.