ADGEO Advances in Geosciences ADGEO Adv. Geosci. 1680-7359 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/adgeo-32-77-2012 Climate change impacts on Central Asian water resources Malsy M. 1 Aus der Beek T. 1 Eisner S. 1 Flörke M. 1 Center for Environmental Systems Research, University of Kassel, Wilhelmshöher Allee 47, 34109 Kassel, Germany 13 12 2012 32 77 83 Copyright: © 2012 M. Malsy et al. 2012 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://adgeo.copernicus.org/articles/32/77/2012/adgeo-32-77-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://adgeo.copernicus.org/articles/32/77/2012/adgeo-32-77-2012.pdf

Central Asia is in large parts dominated by low precipitation and, consequentially, by low water availability. Therefore, changes of natural water resources induced by climate change are of high interest. The aim of this study is to analyse the potential impact of climate change on Central Asian water resources until the end of the 21st century and to point out the main affected regions. Thus, simulations with the large-scale hydrology model WaterGAP3 for the baseline and scenario periods were performed with outputs from three General Circulation Models (GCMs: ECHAM5, IPSL-CM4, and CNRM-CM3) and two IPCC-SRES emission scenarios (A2 and B1). The results show that mean modelled annual water availability increases for all scenarios and GCMs while CNRM-CM3 induces the wettest water situation for the 2085s and ECHAM5 the lowest water availability. Furthermore, robust trends to wetter or dryer conditions could be found for many basins. A seasonal shift of mean modelled water availability could be derived for ECHAM5 which does not show a second peak during summer. The application of daily input data showed no improvement of modelled monthly river discharges for most Central Asian basins compared to monthly input data.

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