Regional water resources and climate modeling

Climate change may have severe effects on water availability in Central Asia. Due to the globally increased air temperature, the glaciers in the Tien Shan and Pamir mountains representing significant water reservoirs are expected to retreat further. The changes in the temperature regime are also likely to cause a seasonal redistribution of the glacial runoff. This poses a challenge for the Central Asian water sector which strongly relies on river discharge for irrigation water supply.

In WP 2, a regional water resources model will be developed for the Central Asian region. It will be implemented exemplarily for three selected mountainous catchments: the catchments of Naryn and  Karadarya providing water for the upper Syr Darya and the Fergana valley, and the Zerafshan catchment playing a significant role in the water supply of major cities such as Samarkand and Buhara.

The water resources model will be driven by meteorological time series, derived from climate stations and from the regional climate model REMO. The latter will be implemented for Central Asia providing future climate scenarios up to the year 2050.

The hydrological model WASA will be used to simulate water availability including rainfall, snow, glacier-ice melting, evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge, and flow in rivers as well as water use (e.g. water storage in dams).

The model simulations will help to analyse future water availability in the selected river basins taking into account climate and land use change scenarios. The future water demand is estimated simulating different water resources management options.

The results of the water resources simulations will provide the scientific basis for decision making and the development of sustainable water management strategies. The existing and continuously measured hydro-meteorological and terrestrial data will be used for model parameterization and validation in order to place confidence into model predictions.

WP 2 is coordinated by the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) Potsdam in cooperation with the Central Asian Institute for Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), the University of Würzburg (Germany), the Commission on Glaciology of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) in Munich (Germany), the Ludwigs-Maximiliams University of Munich (Germany) and the University of Idaho (USA).

Scheme of the works in WP2.

Contact:

Dr. Sergiy Vorogushyn
German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ)
Phone: +49 331 288-1519
Email: vorogus@gfz-potsdam.de