Twenty-first century-end climate scenario of Jammu and Kashmir Himalaya, India, using ensemble climate models
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Twenty-first century-end climate scenario of Jammu and Kashmir Himalaya, India, using ensemble climate models Shakil Ahmad Romshoo 1
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& Jasia Bashir & Irfan Rashid
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Received: 26 November 2019 / Accepted: 2 July 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
The study investigates the future climate change in the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Himalaya, India, by the end of the twenty-first century under 3 emission scenarios and highlights the changes in the distribution of the prevalent climate zones in the region. The multi-model climate high-resolution projections for the baseline period (1961–1990) are validated against the observed climate variables from 8 meteorological stations in the region. The temperature projections from the GFDL CM2.1 model are found in good agreement with the observations; however, no single model investigated in the present study reasonably simulates precipitation and therefore multi-model ensemble is used for precipitation projections. The average annual temperature is projected to increase by 4.5 °C, 3.98 °C, and 6.93 °C by the end of the twentyfirst century under A1B, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. In contrast, an insignificant variation in precipitation projection is observed under all the 3 scenarios. The analysis indicates that, unlike the 13 climate zones under the updated Köppen-Geiger climate classification scheme, the J&K Himalaya broadly falls into 10 main climate zones only namely, “3 subtropical (~ 11%), 4 temperate (~ 19%), and 3 cold desert (~ 70%) zones”. The projected climate change under the 3 emission scenarios indicates significant changes in the distribution of prevalent climate zones. The cold desert climate zone in the Ladakh region would shrink by ~ 22% and correspondingly the subtropical and temperate zones would expand due to the projected climate change. This information is vital for framing robust policies for adaptation and mitigation of the climate change impacts on various socio-economic and ecological sectors in the region. Keywords Climate change . Climate classification . Downscaled climate projections . Kashmir Himalaya Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-02002787-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Shakil Ahmad Romshoo [email protected]
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Department of Earth Sciences, University of Kashmir, Hazratbal, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir 190006, India
Climatic Change
1 Introduction The indicators of climate change are clear in the Indian Himalayan region in the form of the changes in the distribution and structure of ecosystems (Rashid et al. 2015), recession of snow and glaciers (Barnett et al. 2005; Oerlemans 2005; Khadka et al. 2014; Murtaza et al. 2015; Rashid et al. 2017; Marazi and Romshoo 2018), increasing temperatures (Zaz et al. 2019; Rashid et al. 2015), changes in the form of precipitation (Romshoo et al. 2015), streamflow changes (Immerzeel et al. 2010; Marazi and Romshoo 2018), extreme weather events (Goswami
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