Bewässerungs- und Entwässerungssystemtechnik

Climate Change and its Impact on Irrigation Water Requirements on Temporal Scale

Abstract

Mohan S and Ramsundram N

The natural processes and man-made disturbances in the watershed have influenced the micro climate and in turn affect the hydrology of the watershed along the time scale. The increase in emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere might induce variation in climatic pattern in the future. In hydrological models, the climatic parameters remain to be deterministic variables in simulating the surface water or groundwater components. In the recent past, climatological cycle and its variability have been incorporated into water resources systems modeling by many researchers. In this study, an attempt has been made to study the influence of climatic variability on irrigation water requirements in an arid region on a temporal scale, which will help in the water resource planning and management of an irrigation system. A climate crop water requirement (CCWR) integrated framework has been developed to estimate the irrigation requirement in Manimuthar river basin, Tamilnadu, India, incorporating variation in climatic parameters over temporal scale. Based on the existing land use pattern and economic development prevailing in the study area, the most likely climatic scenario has been identified as A1B. From the results, it is inferred that the irrigation water requirement is likely to increase by 5% from 2010 to 2020.