Climate change impact assessment of water resources of India

The present study has been taken up to quantify the possible impact of the climate change on the water resources of Indian river systems within the constraints of the uncertainty of climate change predictions. The study uses the PRECIS daily weather data to determine the spatio-temporal water availability in the river systems. A distributed hydrological model, namely SWAT has been used to simulate all the river basins of the country. The analysis has been performed to evaluate the severity of droughts and floods and thus identify the vulnerable hotspots that may require attention in view of the climate change in various parts of the country. The analysis is also performed on the blue and green water so as to identify the climate change impacts on these sub-components of water that are responsible for environmental functions and biomass production. These results have been made available at http://gisserver.civil.iitd.ac.in/natcom for use by a large cross-section of users.