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Simulating climate impacts on water resources: experience from the Okavango river, Southern Africa

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posted on 2023-06-07, 17:18 authored by Martin ToddMartin Todd, Lotta Andersson, Denis A Hughes, Dominic KnivetonDominic Kniveton, Russell Layberry, Michael Murray-Hudson, Hubert H G Savenije, Julie Wilk, Piotr Wolski
The Okavango River is one of the largest and most important rivers in Southern Africa. The river rises in Angola, a country that has just emerged from a civil war of three decades. The annual flood pulse of the river feeds the Okavango Delta: one of the most valuable environmental resources of the African continent. The Okavango River water and its ecosystem resources are critically important sources of livelihoods in the basin. Pressures from livelihoods and development are already impacting on the environment and are likely to increase. Moreover, future development will occur against the background of climate variability and change. This chapter describes research conducted under the EU-funded project‘Water and Ecosystem Resources in Regional Development’ (WERRD), whose aims included development of scenario modelling as a tool for integrated water resource management in the Okavango River basin. The impact of climate change scenarios on downstream river flow and flooding in the Okavango Delta are simulated using a suite of hydrological models. The simulated impacts of climate change are sensitive to the choice of GCM and the IPCC SRES greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenarios. The simulated impacts are considerable larger that those of the selected development scenarios although the uncertainty in the magnitude of future changes remains high.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

Springer

Volume

63

Page range

243-266

Pages

291.0

Book title

Hydrological modelling and the water cycle: coupling the atmospheric and hydrological models

ISBN

9783540778424

Series

Water science and technology library

Department affiliated with

  • Geography Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Soroosh Sorooshian, Barbara Tomassetti, Kuo-Lin Hsu, Marco Verdecchia, Erika Coppola, Guido Visconti

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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