| dc.description.abstract | It is expected that climate change will have an impact on water resources, hence in society. Water scarcity represents a great impact on the economic system, policy, alimentary safe, technology, and population′s life quality. This study uses the Long-term Water Balance to project the streamflow in the Pamplonita and Zulia watersheds in Colombia under two different scenarios. These two scenarios represent how several factors would unfurl in the future, like socioeconomic, technological, environmental, climate, and greenhouse gas emission conditions. The scenarios used in this project come from the 5th IPCC assessment report (AR5), named Representative Concentration Pathway (RCPs), radiative forcing by 2100, due to different combinations of greenhouse gas emission, economic, policy, technological, institutional and demographic futures). These scenarios were used to assess climate change for two periods of time between 2030 and 2050. The impact on the streamflow was evaluated with five GCMs for temperature: namely CCSm4, GFDL-CM3, MIROC5, MPI-ESM-LR and MRI-C6CM3, and six for precipitation: namely BCC-CSM, CCSm4, GISS E2-H, GISS-E2-R, MPI ESM and MRI-C6CM3.
The results indicate an increasing trend for temperature, with an average increase of 2.0±0.6°C under RCP4.5, and 2.8±0.7 °C under RCP8.5 by 2050. On the other hand, precipitation doesn′t present a clear-cut. However, the mean of these presents a slight decrease, -0.23±0.5% under RCP4.5 and -0.48±0.7% under RCP8.5 by 2050. The projected streamflow indicated an overall trend of decreases in all the periods under review. Annual average streamflow has anticipated a decrease of -4.04 ± 2.6% at the outlet of the watershed under RCP4.5 and -7.77± 1.5% under RCP8.5 by 2050. These results serve as a tool for policymakers in the region, as a reference for the future decision on the water resource management in the region. | en_US |