Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

RAINFALL-RUNOFF SIMULATION UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE CONDITIONS IN CATCHMENT OF DOROODZAN DAM IN FARS PROVINCE OF IRAN

Farshid Safshekan, Ali Mohammad Akhoond-Ali, Ali Haghighi and Heidar Zarei

Abstract

Climate change would significantly affect many hydrologic systems, which in turn would affect the water availability, runoff and the flow in rivers. This study evaluates the impacts of possible future climate change scenarios on the hydrology of the catchment area of the kor River, upstream of the Doroodzan dam and downstream of the Molasadra dam. For planning and management, the climate and the hydrological modelers have begun working out runoff projections. In this research the large-scale climate variables for the A2 and B1scenarios obtained from the Hadley Centre Coupled Model version 3 (HadCM3) are used. Also is used the LARS-WG (Long Ashton Research Station Weather Generator) model to downscale the daily maximum and minimum temperature, and daily precipitation in the study area that is a stochastic weather generator for use in climate impact studies. The rainfall- runoff model of IHACRESS is calibrated and validated to the base period 1988-2010 and run for future periods of 2016–2038 and 2039–2061. Results showed that the average of runoff volume in future years decrease 3.7% during the 2016-2038 while this amount is 5.16% during the 2039-2061 under the both scenarios relative to the base. Also the most increase and decrease in monthly runoff volume has been happened at in June and November at the most scenarios.