A hydrological toolkit to delineate patterns of blue and green water in a regional semi-arid climate in Iran via CMIP5 models

Abstract

Water scarcity and the climate change impacts on water components will drastically alter everybody's life. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been utilized in this study in combination with Sequential Uncertainty Fitting Program (SUFI-2) to simulate precipitation (P), temperature (T), blue water (BW), green water flow (GWF), and green water storage (GWS) in Kashafrood River Basin, Iran. The outputs of two Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models (MIROC-ESM and GFDL-ESM2G) are selected for hydrological modeling under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) of 4.5 and 8.5 and for the near future (2014-2042) and far future (2043-2100( periods compared to historical period (1995-2011). The results of RCPs, in comparison with the historical period, show that P and BW are increased and in GFDL-ESM2G are better than MIROC-ESM, while T tends to increase, and MIROC-ESM is better than GFDL-ESM2G. GWF, in all future periods (except in MIROC-ESM in near future and under RCP4.5 and 8.5) and in all RCPs tend to decrease, and the results of MIROC-ESM are better than those of GFDL-ESM2G in near future and are vice versa in far future. It is anticipated that GWS continues its historical trend in the future.