Predicting hydrologic responses to climate changes in highly glacierized and mountainous region Upper Indus Basin.

The Upper Indus Basin (UIB) is a major source of supplying water to different areas because of snow and glaciers melt and is also enduring the regional impacts of global climate change. The expected changes in temperature, precipitation and snowmelt could be reasons for further escalation of the problem. Therefore, estimation of hydrological processes is critical for UIB. The objectives of this paper were to estimate the impacts of climate change on water resources and future projection for surface water under different climatic scenarios using soil and water assessment tool (SWAT). The methodology includes: (i) development of SWAT model using land cover, soil and meteorological data; (ii) calibration of the model using daily flow data from 1978 to 1993; (iii) model validation for the time 1994-2003; (iv) bias correction of regional climate model (RCM), and (v) utilization of bias-corrected RCM for future assessment under representative concentration pathways RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 for mid (2041-2070) and late century (2071-2100). The results of the study revealed a strong correlation between simulated and observed flow with

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Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

The authors declare competing interests. At the time of writing, Prof. Quazi Hassan was a Board Member of Royal Society Open Science, but had no involvement in the review or assessment of the paper.