| Title: | Discussion of “Multiscale assessment of the impacts of climate change on water resources in Tanzania” by Umesh Adhikari A. Pouyan Nejadhashemi, Matthew R. Herman, and Joseph P. Messina |
| Authors: | Zolghadr-Asli, B. |
| Year: | 2017 |
| Journal: | Journal of Hydrologic Engineering |
| Volume (Issue): | 22(8) |
| Pages: | |
| Article ID: | 07017010 |
| DOI: | 10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0001553 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | comment, correction, discussion, erratum, letter or response |
| Primary Application Category: | uncertainty analysis |
| Secondary Application Category: | climate change assessment |
| Watershed Description: | see general comment |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | The watershed this discussion contribution is focused on is described in the original article which is also accessible in the SWAT Literature Database: Adhikari, U., A. P. Nejadhashemi, M. R. Herman, and J. P. Messina. 2017. Discussion of “Multiscale assessment of the impacts of climate change on water resources in Tanzania”. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering. 22(8): 07017010. Doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0001467. |
| Abstract: | In order to assess the potential impacts of climate change on
Tanzania’s water resources in the mid-21st century, the authors introduced
the projection of six global circulation models (GCMs)
under the most extreme emission scenario (RCP8.5) as inputs to a
widely used process-based hydrological model, namely, soil and
water assessment tool (SWAT), and retrieved the predicted time
series of precipitation, potential and actual evapotranspiration,
surface runoff, water yields, and soil moisture. To achieve realistic
and accurate results, the study area was divided into three general
categories: country-level, watershed-level, and subbasin-level.
Generally speaking, the projected climatic behavior was found
to create more favorable conditions for agricultural production during
wet seasons because of an increase in the water supply, whereas
in dry seasons less favorable conditions were to be expected.
The authors made a tremendous effort to include a considerable
number of hydrological and meteorological variables, given that
their research was conducted on a significantly large-scale. This
attempt is not only admirable due to numerate variables analyzation,
but for consideration of variables such as soil moisture, which
have been neglected in many studies by scholars. Moreover, this
detailed analyzation was conducted not only through the entire
country, which makes the results extremely valuable, but also the
results were categorized and assessed in both seasonal and annual
time steps, a vital attempt in water resources’ operation perspective.
Therefore the discussers would like to show their gratitude to the
authors of the original manuscript for their exceptional research.
This paper contains a brief discussion on how the applied methodology
could have been modified so that a more comprehensive
perspective over the potential impacts of climate change could have
been achieved. For the sake of argument, the proposed contents
were categorized under two topics: emission scenarios and downscaling
methods. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | |