Back to news
15 Nov 2016 | News

New Publication: Climate Change Impacts on Upper Indus Basin Hydrology

2 mins Read

70% Complete

The Indus is one of the most meltwater-dependent rivers on earth. It hosts a large, rapidly growing population, and the world’s largest irrigation scheme. Understanding the hydrology of the upper Indus basin is challenging. The Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalayan mountain ranges are difficult to access, making field measurements of the meteorological, glaciological and hydrological processes difficult. As a result, these processes are still poorly understood. To make things more complex, climate change projections for the Indus basin show a very large spread. The recent (open access) paper published in PLOS ONE presents hydrological projections for the 21st century in the upper Indus basin based on a cryospheric-hydrological model forced with an ensemble of downscaled General Circulation Model outputs.

Three methodological advances are introduced: (i) A new precipitation dataset that corrects for the underestimation of high-altitude precipitation is used. (ii) The model is calibrated using data on river runoff, snow cover and geodetic glacier mass balance. (iii) An advanced statistical downscaling technique that accounts for changes in precipitation extremes is used.

The projections indicate decreases in glacier melt contribution in favor of snow melt and rainfall-runoff contribution to stream flow in the upper Indus basin at the end of the 21st century.

The focus of the analysis in this study is not only on changes in sources of runoff and water availability, but also on changes in seasonality and hydrological extremes, which are still large unknowns in the upper Indus basin. The study concludes that the upper Indus basin faces a very uncertain future in terms of water availability towards the end of the 21st century. Despite the large uncertainties in future climate and water availability scenarios, basin-wide patterns and trends of intra-annual shifts in water availability are consistent across climate change scenarios. For the near future, these trends mainly consist of minor increases in summer flows combined with increased flows during other seasons. For the far future, the trends show decreases in summer flows combined with stronger increasing flows during the other seasons. Furthermore, increases in intensity and frequency of extreme discharges are found for most of the upper Indus basin and for most scenarios and models considered, implying increases in flooding events during the 21st century.

Population growth in combination with increasing standards of living and associated increases in energy and food production will continue to expand the downstream water and energy demand. This implies a growing dependency on uncertain future water resources, which calls for sound basin-wide adaptation strategies to be developed across sectors that take into account the changing demand and supply in the Indus basin as well as the uncertainties therein.

Analysis of future changes indicates increases in the frequency and magnitude of extreme flows for most of the upper Indus basin and most climate change scenarios.

Stay current

Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.

Sign Up

Relative content

Continue exploring this topic

8 Sep 2015 News
Help 4 earthquake affected villages in Kavre, Nepal, secure €10,000

Vote for ICIMOD's entry for Best Climate Practices Award ICIMOD and CEAPRED’s Climate Smart Villages, a pilot across four villages in Kavrepalanchowk in ...

5 May 2017 News
Strengthening Engagement with the Private Sector for Sustainable Mountain Development

For ICIMOD, engagement and partnerships with private sector entities are a means to support its vision and mission for sustainable ...

2 Jan 2015 News
International Conference on Mountain People Adapting to Change completed

The event brought together over 300 climate scientists, adaptation policy makers, and practitioners with the goal of finding more holistic ...

31 Oct 2017 Himalica
Regional Workshop on the Himalica Project in Taplejung Deemed a Success

Key highlights of the workshop were: eight presentations on topics such as large cardamom, ecosystem services assessment, and bee pollination ...

1 May 2019 DFAT Brahmaputra
Refresher training for spring management partners in Bhutan

Experts from ICIMOD and the Advanced Centre for Water Resources Development and Management (ACWADAM) facilitated the refresher training which included ...

19 May 2015 News
International Conference on Ecotourism in Protected Areas opens in Myanmar

The International Conference on Ecotourism in Protected Areas in Myanmar opened today afternoon at the Myanmar International Convention Centre (II), ...

Piloting of the Biodiversity Monitoring Protocol for REDD+ conducted in Parsa Wildlife Reserve, Nepal

Though a few biodiversity monitoring manuals and guidelines from the Government of Nepal (GoN), National Trust for Nature Conservation (

9 Oct 2017 News
Looking Forward to Bounce Back Better from Floods

The statistics about the damages of the 2017 floods are endless and compelling. The images of the flooding even ...