Hydro-climatic aspects of Indus River flow propagation
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Hydro-climatic aspects of Indus River flow propagation Syed Ahmad Hassan 1 & M. Rashid Kamal Ansari 2
Received: 7 February 2015 / Accepted: 7 May 2015 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2015
Abstract One of the world’s largest irrigation networks of Pakistan is based on Indus River System. These networks face serious scarcity of water in 1 year, and agricultural land destructive disastrous floods in the other. To understand the physical basis of statistical variations in space and time in the river flow, this study assesses the reasons governing the system. Therefore, time series analysis of the mean monthly river flow data is performed. The results show strong linear and seasonal behaviour among the river flow of each station. However, the river is regularly energised by the melting of snow/glaciers, and in the monsoon seasons, it experiences strong control by orographic rainfall. On several occasions, the Indus River shows unpredictable disturbances in its usual natural seasonal characteristic flow and their propagation along the network. Therefore, owing to linear, seasonal and monsoonal behaviours, it is expected some contribution of two major local climatic parameters on the river flow. To examine these relations, this paper analyse sum of monthly precipitation and mean monthly temperature with the mean monthly river flow of each station along the Indus River. The real time impact shows that the temperature is more influential at early stations of the Indus River, whereas the rainfall is more affective in case of middle stations. However, the temperature and rainfall display opposite impacts to the river flow at 1-month delay time lag along the Indus River and it
* Syed Ahmad Hassan [email protected] M. Rashid Kamal Ansari [email protected] 1
Institute of Industrial Electronics Engineering (IIEE), PCSIR, St-22/c, Block # 6, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi 75300, Pakistan
2
Department of Mathematics, Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi 75300, Pakistan
explores that the lower three stations river flows are more influential with precipitation than the temperature. Keywords Seasonality . Stochasticity . Monsoon . Snowmelt . Indus River
Introduction The usual predictable flow with seasonal highs and lows of the rivers are considered normal. However, on several occasions, rivers display unpredictable disturbances in their usual natural seasonal characteristic flow (Sivakumar 2000, 2007; Porporato and Ridolfi 2003). The influential role of human society, technological advancement and industrialisation may cause irregularity in the river flow (Rogers and Feiss 1998). These factors increase the frequency and severity of the floods which sometimes becomes dangerous affecting human life and ecosystem (Ahmed 1996). One of the world’s biggest irrigation networks of Pakistan based on Indus River System faces acute shortage of water in one season and agricultural land destruction causing disastrous floods in the other (Rehman and Kamal 2005). To understand the physical basis of
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