Water Resources Availability and Hydropower Production under Current and Future Climate Scenarios: The Case of Jhelum River Basin, Pakistan.

An agro-based country, Pakistan is largely dependent on the Indus basin irrigation system (IBIS), one of the largest irrigation networks in the world, mainly contributed by snow- and glacier-melt runoff from Indus River and its tributaries. A significant proportion of water in the Jhelum River is contributed by its snow- and glacier-fed sub-catchments situated in the Himalayan and Pir Panjal ranges along with monsoon rainfall from low-altitude regions. This study presents the change in snow cover dynamics and its impact on the hydrological behaviour of the catchment, water availability under climate change scenarios in high-altitude scarcely gauged (transboundary nature) catchment and subsequently its impact on hydropower generation at Mangla Dam and downstream canal system through operational management of the Mangla Reservoir. The remotely sensed data products such as MODIS snow cover, TRMM and APHRODITE are utilized, moreover, the climate change investigations are carried out by starting from the different scenarios for climate change as provided by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), and their implementation in climate models known as Global Circulation Models (GCMs), downscaling techniques, and finally Hydrological modeling. The impact of climate change on hydropower generation at Mangla Dam and downstream canal system is computed by the utilization of hydrological outcomes under current and future water resources availability. The outcomes of this study will not only help to solve several complex problems related to practical designing and management issues of water resources and hydropower crises of Pakistan but also for future proposed studies.