Climate Variability Influences on Hydrological Responses of a Large Himalayan Basin

The hydrological cycle, a fundamental component of climate is likely to be altered in important ways due to climate change. In this study, the historical daily runoff has been simulated for the Chenab River basin up to Salal gauging site using a simple conceptual snowmelt model (SNOWMOD). The model has been used to study the impact of plausible hypothetical scenarios of temperature and rainfall on the melt characteristics and daily runoff of the Chenab River basin. The average value of increase in snowmelt runoff for T + 1°C, T + 2°C and T + 3°C scenarios are obtained to be 10, 28 and 43%, respectively. Whereas, the average value of increase in total streamflow runoff for T + 1°C, T + 2°C and T + 3°C are obtained to be 7, 19 and 28%, respectively. Changes in rainfall by −10 and + 10% vary the average annual snowmelt runoff over the T + 2°C scenario by −1% and + 1% only. The result shows that melt is much more sensitive to increase in temperature than to rainfall. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008