Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources in Desert Area Considering Irregularity in Rainfall Intensity and Distribution: A Case Study in Wadi Mujib Basin, Jordan

Abstract

There is a growing awareness regarding climate change fluctuation as its one of the central issues that affects water resources directly. This research was conducted to evaluate the effect of climate change on surface water resources due to the change in rainfall intensity and distribution and to investigate the sensitivity of water resources to climate change.

WEAP has been utilized to simulate future available water resources and figure out the possible implications of changing climate on Wadi Mujib Basin which represent the desert feature in Jordan. Different future scenarios have been built up and analyzed to predict the change in runoff over the period between 2014 and 2050; thus precipitation and evapotranspiration data for the period between 1991 and 2013 have been alerted for the model input to develop four different climate change scenarios.

The simulation shows that annual average runoff in the selected study area would decrease compared with “no change” scenario. This reduction will influence the amount of water stored in Mujib dam directly which in turns will add additional pressure on the available water resources and thus intensify water scarcity in the country. Climate change could also have effects on monthly runoff distribution. The model predicts that runoff will decrease in a different manner over months. March to June months along with October could face the highest relative decrease in runoff compared to December, January and February months.

Keywords: climate change, hydrological model, WEAP model, Mujib Basin, Desert Area