Changes of Some Indices of Low Flow affected by Climate Change in the Tang Panj Sezar Basin

Due to the effects of climate change on water resources and hydrology, Changes in low flow as an important part of the water cycle, is of interest to researchers, water managers and users in various fields. Changes in characteristics of low flows affected by climate change may have important effects on various aspects of socioeconomic , environmental, water resources and governmental planning. There are several indices to assess the low flows. The used low flow indices in this research for assessing climate change impacts, is include the extracted indices from flow duration curve (Q70, Q90 and Q95), due to the importance of these indices in understanding and assessing the status of river flow in dry seasons that was investigated in Tang Panj Sezar basin in the west of Iran.
In this paper, the Tang Panj Sezar basin with an area of 9410 km2 was divided into 6 smaller sub catchments and the changes of low flow indices were studied in each of the sub catchments. In order to consider the effects of climate change on low flow, scenarios of temperature and precipitation using 10 atmospheric general circulation models (to investigate the uncertainty of GCMs) for both the baseline (1971-2000) and future (2011-2040) under A2 emission scenario was prepared. These scenarios, due to large spatial scale need to downscaling. Therefore, LARS-WG stochastic weather generator model was used. In order to consider the effects of climate change on low flows in the future, a hydrologic model is required to simulate daily flow for 2011-2040. The IHACRES rainfall-runoff model was used for this purpose . After simulation of daily flow using IHACRES, with two time series of daily flow for the observation and future period in each of the sub catchment, the low flow indices were compared.
Results According to results, across the whole year, the monthly temperature in the future period has increased while rainfall scenarios show different variations for different months, also within a month for different GCMs. Based on the results of low flow indices, in most cases, the three indices of Q70, Q90, and Q95 will show incremental changes in the future compared to the past. Also, the domain simulation by 10 GCMs for all three indices is maximum in Tang Panj Sezar and less for other sub catchments, which is related to better performance of IHACRES model in smaller sub catchments. In order to investigate the uncertainty of type changes in different indices in every sub catchment, changes in any of the indices were considered based on the median of GCMs. To achieve the correct type of changes in low flow indices, the amount of error in a simulation of the indices of IHACRES rainfall-runoff model should also be taken into consideration. Therefore, considering the error, the three indices Q70, Q90 and Q95 in all sub catchments (except for Tang Panj Sezar) will have the relative increase in the future period. The improvement of low flow state in the future period is related to the changes occurred in the state of climate scenarios. As the results indicated, most often, there is an increase in rainfall in dry seasons. Also, in different months of the wet season wet season, if the result of changes in quantity of rainfall is incremental, it can lead to an increase in river flow through groundwater recharge. On the other hand due to the limestone and karst forms in most of the basin area, water storage ability and increase the amount of river flow during low water season in this area is expected. The study on rainfall quantity in Tang Panj Sezar sub catchment also indicated that, there will be no significant increase or decrease in the quantity of rainfall in the dry season. Thus, it is expected that there will not be significant changes in low flow indices. In this sub catchment, changes in various low flow indices do not match perfectly, so more difficult to obtain reliable results. With regard to incremental changes of Q95, low flow index with less uncertainty, as well as improving indices of low flow in other sub-basins, it is possible to predict a relatively better state for low flow indices of Tang Panj Sezar in the future period.
Using temperature and rainfall scenarios to simulate river flow in the future, a relative increase of all three low flow indices Q70, Q90 and Q95 was predicted compared with the past period. Although all three of mentioned indices show the amount of low flow in the dry season, it is recommended that only two indices of Q90 and Q95 to assess the effects of climate change be considered. Q90 and Q95 indices are more suitable indices than Q70 for studying the effects of climate change on low flow state. These two indices indicate less quantity of flow in dry seasons; therefore, the changes of the two indices are more important in identifying the low flow state. However, there is less uncertainty in the estimation of the two Q90 and Q95 indices than Q70.