Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Streamflow - A Case Study of Naryn River Basin, Central Asia

Abstract This study developed an ensemble streamflow forecast modeling system (ESFMS) for long-term streamflow assessment under climate change. ESFMS consists of multiple global climate models and Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) models. ESFMS can not only reflect the uncertainty in climate scenarios, but also capture the combination of snowmelt and rainfall-streamflow processes in a simple operation. ESFMS is applied to the Naryn River Basin (in Central Asia) to analyse streamflow changes in the 21st century. The major findings are: (i) average annual streamflow of the Naryn River Basin shows an increasing trend under all conditions in the 21st century; (ii) the maximum average growth rate is 7.2 m3/s per year in May and the minimum is 0.2 m3/s per year in July; (iii) the spring streamflow change is more sensitive to climate change.