Hydrological impact of regional climate change in the Chao Phraya River Basin, Thailand

Abstract

The warming of the Earth’s atmosphere system will change temperature and precipitation distributions across the globe. This will affect the hydrological cycle and, therefore, the hydrology of river basins worldwide. In this study, we model the stream flow of the Chao Phraya River Basin (CPRB), Thailand, in response to two climate change projection data sets under scenario A1B of the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. We used Japan Meteorological Research Institute (MRI) atmospheric general circulation model 3.1 and 3.2 output data as input to a watershed hydrologic model to assess the impact of climate change for the basin. We found that, in the future, the mean annual river discharge is likely to increase in the CPRB due to increased rainfall. Furthermore, increases in annual maximum daily flows will occur toward the end of the 21st century.