After many years of intense negotiations, the 195 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted on 12 December 2015 in Paris a new global agreement on how all countries collectively will tackle climate change. The Paris Agreement is widely recognized as the most significant environmental treaty ever adopted, with strong positive implications on development, international cooperation and, of course, for the climate. The ambition is to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2oC above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5oC.

United nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc)

Climate Change 1995 is a scientific assessment that was generated by more than 1 000 contributors from over 50 nations. It was jointly co-ordinated through two international agencies; the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. The assessment was completed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with a primary aim of reviewing the current state of knowledge concerning the impacts of climate change on physical and ecological systems, human health, and socioeconomic factors. The second aim was to review the available information on the technical and economic feasibility of the potential mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Climate Change 1995

Large-scale monitoring of snow cover and runoff simulation in Himalayan river basins using remote sensing

. Mountains are essential sources of freshwater for our world, but their role in global water resources could well be significantly altered by climate change. How well do we understand these potential changes today, and what are implications for water resources management, climate change adaptation, and evolving water policy? To answer above questions, we have examined 11 case study regions with the goal of providing a global overview, identifying research gaps and formulating recommendations for research, management and policy. After setting the scene regarding water stress, water management capacity and scientific capacity in our case study regions, we examine the state of knowledge in water resources from a highland-lowland viewpoint, focusing on mountain areas on the one hand and the adjacent lowland areas on the other hand. Based on this review, research priorities are identified, including precipitation, snow water equivalent, soil parameters, evapotranspiration and sublimation, groundwater as well as enhanced warming and feedback mechanisms. In addition, the importance of environmental monitoring at high altitudes is highlighted. We then make recommendations how advancements in the management of mountain water resources under climate change could be achieved in the fields of research, water resources management and policy as well as through better interaction between these fields. We conclude that effective management of mountain water resources urgently requires more detailed regional studies and more reliable scenario projections, and that research on mountain water resources must become more integrative by linking relevant disciplines. In addition, the knowledge exchange between managers and researchers must be improved and oriented towards long-term continuous interaction.

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Climate change and mountain water resources: overview and recommendations for research, management and policy

The impact of climate change on the water resources of Hindukush–Karakorum–Himalaya region under different glacier coverage scenarios

The most important climatological inputs required for the calibration and validation of hydrological models are temperature and precipitation that can be derived from observational records or alternatively from regional climate models (RCMs). In this paper, meteorological station observations and results of the PRECIS (Providing REgional Climate for Impact Studies) RCM driven by the outputs of reanalysis ERA 40 data and HadAM3P general circulation model (GCM) results are used as input in the hydrological model. The objective is to investigate the effect of precipitation and temperature simulated with the PRECIS RCM nested in these two data sets on discharge simulated with the HBV model for three river basins in the Hindukush-Karakorum-Himalaya (HKH) region. Six HBV model experiments are designed: HBV-Met, HBV-ERA and HBV-Had, HBV-MetCRU-corrected, HBV-ERABenchmark and HBV-HadBenchmark where HBV is driven by meteorological stations data, data from PRECIS nested in ERA-40 and HadAM3P, meteorological stations CRU corrected data, ERA-40 reanalysis and HadAM3P GCM data, respectively. Present day PRECIS simulations possess strong capacity to simulate spatial patterns of present day climate characteristics. However, also some quantitative biases exist in the HKH region, where PRECIS RCM simulations underestimate temperature and overestimate precipitation with respect to CRU observations. The calibration and validation results of the HBV model experiments show that the performance of HBV-Met is better than the HBV models driven by other data sources. However, using input data series from sources different from the data used in the model calibration shows that HBV-Had is more efficient than other models and HBV-Met has the least absolute relative error with respect to all other models. The uncertainties are higher in least efficient models (i.e. HBV-MetCRU-corrected and HBV-ERABenchmark) where the model parameters are also unrealistic. In terms of both robustness and uncertainty ranges the HBV models calibrated with PRECIS output performed better than other calibrated models except for HBV-Met which has shown a higher robustness. This suggests that in data sparse regions such as the HKH region data from regional climate models may be used as input in hydrological models for climate scenarios studies.

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M. Akhtar

Papers

The impact of climate change on the water resources of Hindukush–Karakorum–Himalaya region under different glacier coverage scenarios

Use of regional climate model simulations as input for hydrological models for the Hindukush-Karakorum-Himalaya region