Assessing the impact of climatic change on discharge in Swat river basin using fuzzy logic model

This article deals with the climate parameters and their possible impact on river discharge in the Hindu Kush region using fuzzy logic approach. The study area possesses a diverse geographical setting and is generally an unexplored region in term of research on climatic variability. All the hydro-climatic variables such as temperature, rainfall, river discharge, and snowfall are extremely challenging to quantity in case of climate change. There should be a comprehensive study to model and measure the significant four significant hydro-climatic parameters relevant to climate change scenario i.e. rainfall, temperature, snowfall, and discharge (runoff). In this study, a fuzzy logic based-rule model was applied to assists the climatic change variability and trend prediction for all four parameters. Specifically the fuzzy logic rule-based model was used for climate change trends detection in uncertain circumstances. A case study focused on the Swat River Basin in Northern Pakistan was used for validation and calibration of this fuzzy technique in MATrix LABoratory (MATLAB). After modelling, the entire four parameters were further divided into three subparameters. Similarly, in the shape of membership functions a total of fifty-three rules have been generated for fuzzy analysis excluding the duplicate values. After fuzzy modelling, it was concluded from the integrated analysis that an extremely close and high climatic trend association has been verified amongst discharge, temperature, rainfall, and snowfall, whereas the rest of the analysis shows fluctuation. © 2021, Saudi Society for Geosciences.