Impacts of Climate Change on Surface Water Resources of the Ziarat River Basin, Iran

Background/Objectives: To assess the impacts of climate change on water resources (Ziarat River basin) using appropriate model. Methods: A general atmosphere circulation model HadCM3 was used to study climatic change and in order to downscaling HadCM3 model outputs, ANFIS model was also used. After calculating minimum, maximum temperature and precipitation, the impact of climate on drainage basin of Ziarat was identified. In next step of research, the impact of this phenomenon on basin’s runoff was assessed using HEC-HMS model. This model was first used for base period then the impacts of climate change and global warming on hydrology of basin in future periods were investigated. Results: Research results clearly showed that climate scenarios in all three future periods have equal impact on climate changes. So that an increasing in temperature and decrease in precipitation will occur in future. The volume of discharging Ziarat River will be associated with decreasing flow rate or discharge. So that the decrease will be gradual and continues and the lowest decrease in Horizon 2020 and the highest one will be also in period 2090. These results show that increasing temperature and consequently increasing evapotranspiration and soil moisture reduction will be effective on reducing the runoff.