Projecting Future Paddy Irrigation Demands in Korea

Abstract

Climate change will introduce changes in air and sea water temperature, rainfall, among others. This will affect water resources, food production, public health, etc. To assess the impacts of climate change is a prerequisite to developing adaptation and mitigation strategies. In this study the impacts of climate change on paddy irrigation water demands in Korea have been analyzed. Dynamically downscaled 27 × 27 km grid future climate data for the SRES A2 scenario and the observed baseline climatology dataset were used. A geographic information system was used to produce maps showing the spatial changes in irrigation water requirements for rice paddies. The results showed that the growing season mean temperature and rainfall for future scenarios were projected to increase. The effect of ETo increase due to temperature increase was larger than that of rainfall increase on paddy irrigation requirement. Therefore the paddy irrigation requirement was projected to increase in the future. The total volumetric irrigation water demand was projected to increase by 2.8% (2020s), 4.9% (2050s) and 4.5% (2080s). The temporal and spatial variations were large and should be considered in irrigation water resource planning and management in the future. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.