Hydrological Modeling of the Upper Indus Basin: A Case Study from a High-Altitude Glacierized Catchment Hunza

Khan, Garee; Chen, Xi; Bao, Anming; Wang, Yu; Meng, Fanhao

doi:10.3390/w9010017

Cited by 84 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 41 publications

(66 reference statements)

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“…SWAT was used by Abbaspour et al [18] to study climate change impact on Iran's water resources. Garee et al [19] studied climate change impact on the streamflows of Hunza watershed in Pakistan. According to their study, the overall temperature is anticipated to rise form 1.39 • C to 6.58 • C with 31% increase in precipitation causing 5-10% increase in streamflows by the end of the century.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact Assessment of Future Climate Change on Streamflows Upstream of Khanpur Dam, Pakistan using Soil and Water Assessment Tool

Nauman

Zulkafli

Ghazali

et al. 2019

Water

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The study aims to evaluate the long-term changes in meteorological parameters and to quantify their impacts on water resources of the Haro River watershed located on the upstream side of Khanpur Dam in Pakistan. The climate data was obtained from the NASA Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projection (NEX-GDDP) for MIROC-ESM model under two Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios. The model data was bias corrected and the performance of the bias correction was assessed statistically. Soil and Water Assessment Tool was used for the hydrological simulation of watershed followed by model calibration using Sequential Uncertainty Fitting version-2. The study is useful for devising strategies for future management of Khanpur Dam. The study indicated that in the future, at Murree station (P-1), the maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation were anticipated to increase from 3.1 °C (RCP 4.5) to 4.0 °C (RCP 8.5), 3.2 °C (RCP 4.5) to 4.3 °C (RCP 8.5) and 8.6% to 13.5% respectively, in comparison to the baseline period. Similarly, at Islamabad station (P-2), the maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation were projected to increase from 3.3 °C (RCP 4.5) to 4.1 °C (RCP 8.5), 3.3 °C (RCP 4.5) to 4.2 °C (RCP 8.5) and 14.0% to 21.2% respectively compared to baseline period. The streamflows at Haro River basin were expected to rise from 8.7 m3/s to 9.3 m3/s.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact Assessment of Future Climate Change on Streamflows Upstream of Khanpur Dam, Pakistan using Soil and Water Assessment Tool

Nauman

Zulkafli

Ghazali

et al. 2019

Water

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“…This also applies to the UIB where only the lower-altitude area may have higher ET contributions, while the high elevation sub-catchments may have only minor annual ET due to their low average temperatures. For example, in Hunza basin of the UIB, Garee et al [97], reported a model ET equal to 18% of the precipitation, and indicating even lower ET in the higher altitude catchments. Therefore, in UIB, which is also a a high mountainous basin and have a mean annual water discharge of around 462 mm/y, the ET in UIB should not amount to such high values, almost equal to the observed runoff.…”

Section:  Evapotranspiration (Et) Estimatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To solve this issues, ET products with relatively lower values were evaluated. one such ET data is the Esri_hydro "Average Annual Evapotranspiration" [98], which is based on the MOD16 Global Evapotranspiration Product, and derived from MODIS-satellite imagery by a team of researchers at the University of Montana, have comparatively lower ET-estimates, which match better the recommended values of Bookhagen and Burbank [96] or the ET-values reported by Garee et al, [97]. The MOD16-ET-data have a good resolution of 1 km 2 and are available over the period 2000-2011.…”

Section:  Evapotranspiration (Et) Estimatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correction and Informed Regionalization of Precipitation Data in a High Mountainous Region (Upper Indus Basin) and Its Effect on SWAT-Modelled Discharge

Khan¹,

Koch²

2018

Preprint

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The current study applied a new approach for the interpolation and regionalization of observed precipitation series to a smaller spatial scale (0.125° by 0.125° grid) across the Upper Indus Basin (UIB), with appropriate adjustments for the orographic effect and changes in glacier storage. The approach is evaluated and validated through reverse hydrology, guided by observed flows and available knowledge base. More specifically, the generated corrected precipitation data is validated by means of SWAT-modelled responses of the observed flows to the different input precipitation series (original and corrected ones). The results show that the SWAT-simulated flows using the corrected, regionalized precipitation series as input are much more in line with the observed flows than those using the uncorrected observed precipitation input for which significant underestimations are obtained. stations, the coverage is still very thin and the data less representative, especially, for different elevation zones. The available data also needs a lot of preprocessing, as it represents uncorrected raw precipitation readings, and, therefore, needs checking for quality issues and correction for losses or gaps. Similarly, while most of the weather stations have become operational after the mid-nineties, long-term data is a rear commodity and only available at a limited number of locations.Owing to the complex orography of the UIB region and to the co-action of different hydro-climatic regimes (which affect the amounts, spatial patterns and the seasonality of precipitation), neither the sparse observed station data (or the gridded data products based on them) nor the sensors-based data, fully represents the precipitation regime of the region [11][12][13][14]. Several studies have pointed out that precipitation in the HKH (Hindu Kush Himalayan) -region exhibits large changes over short distances and has a considerable vertical gradient [15][16][17][18][19][20]. This also explains the fact that the average precipitation amounts over the UIB (based on the sparse and low-altitude climatic station network), are unrealistically low to be able to sustain the observed discharge at the basin outlet.These factors have led many researchers to find ways to assess methods for precipitation correction that may lead to a more realistic water balance [21] in many basins and have also compelled a number of hydrological studies in the UIB region to use, in addition to the observed station data, a variety of other reference climate data from different sources, either directly or with prior modifications and adjustments (e.g. TRMM Data [22]; modified APHRODIT [23], or modified WFDEI data [13] etc).This study proposes a simple method to regionalize and correct precipitation data in the UIB through accounting for the orographic effect at a scale finer than the one covered by the streamgauging network, by applying a new method based on a step-wise correction and informed regionalization. This method consists of three steps: 1) Correction for systematic errors;...

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“…Another source of uncertainty is model structural uncertainty. Over the past few decades, several models with different structures have been applied in the UIB, including Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalansavdelning (HBV) (Akhtar et al, ), the Snowmelt‐Runoff Model (Tahir et al, ), the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (Garee et al, ), and the University of British Columbia watershed model (Ali et al, ; Hasson, ; Naeem et al, ). Other UIB studies have utilised fully distributed models, such as the Spatial Processes in Hydrology model (Lutz et al, ), the Water and Energy Budget‐based Distributed Hydrological Model (Shrestha et al, ), and TOPKAPI (Ragettli et al, ; Pellicciotti et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Amplification of hydrological model uncertainties in projected climate simulations of the Upper Indus Basin: Does it matter where the water is coming from?

Dolk

Penton

Ahmad

2020

Hydrological Processes

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There is a growing appreciation of the uncertainties in the estimation of snow-melt and glacier-melt as a result of climate change in high elevation catchments. Through a detailed examination of three hydrological models in two catchments, and interpretation of results from previous studies, we observed that many variations in estimated streamflow could be explained by the selection of a best parameter set from the possible good model parameters. The importance of understanding changing glacial dynamics is critically important for our study areas in the Upper Indus Basin where Pakistan's policymakers are planning infrastructure to meet the future energy and water needs of hundreds of millions of people downstream. Yet, the effect of climate on glacial runoff and climate on snowmelt runoff is poorly understood. With the HBV model, for example, we estimated glacial melt as between 56% and 89% for the Hunza catchment. When rainfall was a scaled parameter, the models estimated glacial melt as between 20% and 100% of streamflow. These parameter sets produced wildly different projections of future climate for RCP8.5 scenarios in 2046-2075 compared to 1976-2005. Assuming no glacial shrinkage, for one climate projection, we found that the choice among good parameter sets resulted in projected values of future streamflow across a range from +54% to +125%. Parameter selection was the most significant source of uncertainty in the glaciated catchment and amplified climate model uncertainty, whereas climate model choice was more important in the rainfall dominated catchment. Although the study focuses on Pakistan, the overall conclusions are instructive for other similar regions in the world.We suggest that modellers of glaciated catchments should present results from at least the book-ends: models with low sensitivity to ice-melt and models with high sensitivity to ice-melt. This would reduce confusion among decision makers when they are faced with similar contrasting results.

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Hydrological Modeling of the Upper Indus Basin: A Case Study from a High-Altitude Glacierized Catchment Hunza

Cited by 84 publications

References 41 publications

Impact Assessment of Future Climate Change on Streamflows Upstream of Khanpur Dam, Pakistan using Soil and Water Assessment Tool

Impact Assessment of Future Climate Change on Streamflows Upstream of Khanpur Dam, Pakistan using Soil and Water Assessment Tool

Correction and Informed Regionalization of Precipitation Data in a High Mountainous Region (Upper Indus Basin) and Its Effect on SWAT-Modelled Discharge

Amplification of hydrological model uncertainties in projected climate simulations of the Upper Indus Basin: Does it matter where the water is coming from?

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