JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

This study investigated the effects of climate change on the evapotranspiration amount and water balance in the Zayandeh-Rud river basin. Two important weather stations; Isfahan and Chelgerd stations, located in the East and West of the basin respectively, were selected for investigation in this study. The combination of 15 GCM models were created based on the weighting method and three patterns of climate change including the ideal, medium and critical were defined. Using the proposed patterns, the effects of climate change on temperature and evapotranspiration in Isfahan station and precipitation in Chelgerd station were estimated under the A2 and B1 emissions scenarios. Two indices were considered to determine the sustainability of agricultural water consumption in the study area. Ratio of evapotranspiration in the East part of the basin to precipitation in the West part was defined as EPR index (Evapotranspiration-Precipitation Ratio), and the ratio of maximum agricultural water deficit to the amount of agriculture water need, was considered as maximum deficit index (MD). Results showed that the annual temperature would increase between 0.63-1.13°C in the eastern part of the basin. The west precipitation in the basin would reduce between 6.5-30% in the ideal to critical patterns. Summer season, showed the most amount of increase in the temperature, and winter season, showed the most amount of decrease in precipitation. The A2 emission scenario showed more temperature increase and more precipitation decrease in comparison with the B1 emission scenario and also indicated that the potential evapotranspiration would increase by 3.1 to 4.8% in the basin. The EPR index will increase between 13-52% and MD index will increase between 9-35% in Zayandeh-Rud river basin under different climate change patterns. The results revealed the imbalance between agricultural water use in eastern part and the precipitation in the western part of the basin. In other words, in these conditions, appropriate management strategies and planning should be implemented to ensure the sustainability of water resources in Zayandeh-Rud River Basin.

This study aims to investigate the changes of minimum and maximum temperature variables under the impact of climate change for time period of 2015-2100 in the Zayandeh-Rud River Basin. The outputs of 14 Global Climate Models (GCMs) under three green-house emission scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5) are employed from the Fifth Assessment Report (CMIP5) of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A novel statistical downscaling method using a Bayesian Relevance Vector Machine (RVM) is used to project the impact of climate change on the temperature variables at regional scale. The results of the weighting average of the GCMs show that the various models have different accuracy in the projecting the minimum and maximum temperatures in the study area. The results demonstrate that the MIROC5 and CCSM4 are the most reliable models in projecting the maximum and minimum temperatures, respectively. The highest increase for both maximum and minimum temperatures was obtained in winter.
    On the annual basis, the maximum temperature will increase by 0.18-0.76 °C and 0.25-1.67 °C, respectively, in the near and long-term future periods under different emission scenarios. The annual minimum temperature will increase by 0.28 to 0.82 °C and 0.24-1.56 °C, respectively, in the near and long-term future periods. In a general view, changes in maximum temperature will be slightly higher than minimum temperature changes in the future.