Water Resources in India under Changed Climate Scenario

The present study is an attempt to assess the impacts of climate change on water resources of the river basins of India which have immense importance in domestic, industrial agricultural and hydropower scenario. A distributed hydrological model developed from HEC-HMS was used on the Indian river basins using the projected daily precipitation and temperature data for the continuous daily range for the period of (2010-2040), (2041-2070) and (2071-2100) generated based on ERA-15 SRES run of PRECIS model using Met Office Hadley Centre Regional Climate Model as supplied by IITM, Pune with baseline (1961-1990) for A2, A1B and B2 scenarios without sulphur cycle with grid spacing 0.440 latitude x 0.440 longitude. The future estimation of runoff was done by HEC-HMS model and the estimated runoff was fed to the water budget equation for determination of water availability. The green water, water sequestration, virtual water and water footprint was calculated from the estimated water availability. A synthesis of proper prediction of the future scenario as regards the quantum of surplus and deficit basins for the rivers basin of India have been identified and possible notional inter basin transfer has been discussed without considering the intricacy of ecological, environmental and political constraints.