Estimation of Hydro-Meteorological Extremes in Beas Basin Over Historic, Present and Future Scenario

Abstract

Abstract. The North West Himalayan basins have always been prone to hydro-meteorological disasters. Among them Beas Basin is one of the highly affected basins. Beas basin is prone to cloudburst which causes huge loss to life and property every year. Increase in these devastating events have been noticed in the recent years. Climatic change is considered as the major driver for this increased occurrence of these events in the recent past. The analysis of long-term hydrological extremes over the basin will help in understanding the pattern of the hydro-meteorological extremes and also predicting its nature in near and far future. The Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model at the grid size of 0.025° × 0.025° has been used in the present study, for simulating the hydrological behaviour of the Beas Basin. The parameterization of the model inputs is derived from Remote Sensing based and field observed datasets. The model was forced with meteorological dataset of ERA-Interim for the past and present time period and CORDEX dataset for the future time period. The model was calibrated using observed discharge data of Nadaun and Sujanpur stations. The Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency of calibrated model was achieved to be 0.77 and 0.72 and coefficient of determination (R2) was 0.80 and 0.72, respectively. The validation results of the model for the same stations shows the model efficiency to be 0.73 and 0.74 with coefficient of determination (R2) as 0.67 and 0.82, respectively. The well calibrated model was used to simulate the hydrological behaviour of historic period (1979–2000), present period (2001–2017), near future period (2018–2050) and far future period (2051–2099). The exceedance probability curve method has been utilized in estimating the flood peak value for the future time period. The flood peak discharge value for the future time period comes out to be 1050 m3/s. The hydro-meteorological extremes rate per year in each period was found to be 9, 9, 12 and 14, respectively. The hydro-meteorological extremes rate is showing increasing trend in near future and very high increase in far future. The study highlights the probability of occurrence of catastrophic events in coming future. The methodology and results of the present study can be beneficial for sustainable development of the basin to counter the effect of probable hydro-meteorological extremes in coming future.