Water Resources Management for Climate

Change Adaptation and Sustainable

Water Security

N. H. Rao

XIII Agricultural Science Congress, Bengaluru, 2017

 Outline

• Water security – definition and status

• Climate change - trends over India

• Climate change and water resources

• Science and policy framework for climate smart water security

Water security

Water security: availability of acceptable quantity and quality of water for

health, production, livelihoods and ecosystems, coupled with an acceptable
level of water-related risks to people, environment and economies

• Water security = f (demographic, economic, land use, technological,

environmental change, tolerable water related risk for society)

• Water security is about managing two types of risks across scales:

• Access risk for productive services
• Destructive risk for human and natural systems

Water insecurity among top three risks for global economy

(WEF, 2017)

Grey and Ladoff (2008); Grey, 2016

Water security status: National Water Balance
• 11 of 20 river basins currently water
stressed/water scarce/abs scarcity
• Surface storage capacity 250 BCM ~
200 m3/capita (world average: 800
m3/capita; China 2500 m3/capita;
USA: 6000 m3/capita)
Adapted from: CWC, 2016; Water Data Book
Per Capita water 1600 M3 (2010)
availability 1139 M3 (2050)
Range for river basins <300 - >14000 M3
1000 M3 = average per capita water requirement
(drinking, hygiene and growing food)
Water stress: 1000-1700 M3
Water scarce: 500- 1000 M3
Absolute scarcity: < 500 M3
Water security status: water availability
Groundwater
Surface water Groundwater anomaly
Rainfall (mm) availability (m) availability (m) trend 2002-13

• Surface water availability is higher, but groundwater dependence is very high

• Groundwater draft: 245 BCM in 2011 (~ total surface storage); 90% for irrigation;
covers > 60% irrigated area; responsible for 70% of production
• Groundwater meets 85% of rural and 80% of urban water needs
• Groundwater aquifers are highly stressed in Northern India
• water table declining by 20mm/yr during 2002-13
• Groundwater depletion in N-W India = 40mm/year (highest in major aquifers of world)
• In 60% of Blocks, groundwater development is critical/unsafe or water quality is poor

Adapted from: CGWB 2015; World Resources Group – India Water Data Tool, 2015; Asoka et al, 2017
 Water security status: water stress (rain deficit) and
storage requirement
Normalized
Deficit Index
Normalized deficit Index (NDI) =
Maximum accumulated water deficit in a district in n years
Average rainfall for the period
(n = 104 years)
adapted from : Devineni et al, 2013
• NDI <1; small local intra-annual water
storage will suffice
• NDI > 1; medium annual carry over storage
or groundwater can meet deficits of worst
droughts at specified risk levels
• NDI > 5; districts have chronic multi-year
water stress
• large surface storage or groundwater
needed to meet multi-year drought deficit
• corresponding districts currently have
canal irrigation & critical levels of
groundwater exploitation
Even without climate change:
• water security in many regions is at risk
• risks will increase and spread to more
regions as water demand increases with
population & and incomes (~ 70% by 2050)
Climate change intensifies water insecurity
Median return period in 21st century for discharge
corresponding to the 20th century 100-year flood

• Climate change alters the hydrologic cycle:

• Alters soil moisture, surface flows & groundwater recharge patterns
• Increases variability of water supplies
• Increases risk of extreme events (rainfall intensity, hot temperatures, floods, droughts)
• Small changes in temperature and rainfall are amplified in river flows and extremes
• Groundwater recharge responds more steadily to precipitation changes
• Increases pressure on surface water infrastructure
• Water security is about managing risks across local to regional scales
Fig source: IPCC, 2012; Hirabayashi et al, 2013
Climate projections to 2100 - Temperature

• Annual Mean Temperature

increases ( 2030 to 2100):
• 2.0 to 4.8 for BAU
• 1.7 - 2°C (RCP2.6)
• More increase in night
temperature and post monsoon
• Increase in frequency of
extreme temperatures (1‐in‐20
year hottest day likely to
become a 1‐in‐2 year event)
• Consecutive day warm spells
beyond 90th percentile,
lengthen to 150–200 days
under (BAU), but only to 30–45
days under RCP2.6

Fig source; Chaturvedi et al, 2012

Climate projections to 2100 - Rainfall

• Mean annual precipitation: increases

4-5% by 2030s; 6 - 14% by 2080s;
except for a few regions in short term
projections (2030s); increase in inter-
annual variability
• Years with above normal monsoon
rainfall expected to increase
• Extreme precipitation: increase in
frequency of extreme precipitation
(>40 mm/day) days for 2060s and
beyond; 30-40% increase in frequency
of > 100 mm/day events
• 1‐in‐20 year annual maximum daily
precipitation likely to become a 1‐in‐5
to 1‐in‐15‐year event by the end of the
21st century
• Frequency and intensity of droughts
increase in lower latitudes
• Frequency and intensity of floods
increases
Fig source; Chaturvedi et al, 2012
Climate change impacts on water resources – streamflow in major basins

RCP 4.5 RCP 8.5

2070-2099 2070-2099

• In majority of river basins, streamflow likely to increase

• Monsoon season streamflow increase > 40% in 8/9 basins for RCP 4.5/RCP8.5
• Streamflow is more sensitive to changes in rainfall than temperature
• Evapotranspiration increases up to 10% in both scenarios

Source: Mishra & Lihare 2016

Climate change impacts on water resources – drought
(moderate(1,2), moderate to severe (3,4))

1 2 3
2021-50
4
2071-98
2021-50 2071-98

• estimates based on weekly soil moisture deficit

• increase in moderate and severe drought frequencies and areal extent despite
increase in rainfall (marginal improvement towards end of century)

Source: Gosain et al, 2012

Climate change impacts on water resources – extreme flows,
dependable flows
2021-50 2071-98 2021-50 2071-98

• Extreme flows (99th percentile) increase by 10-50% leading to flooding in majority of the
river basins; few sub-basins show some decrease in the peak flows
• dependable (10th percentile) flows also increase; in some basins in central India
dependable flows decline
• Substantial efforts required to develop future water management strategies

Source: Gosain et al, 2012

Climate change impacts on groundwater

• strategic importance of ground water for water

security will intensify under climate change because:
• high dependence and storage capacity
• frequent and intense droughts and floods
• increasing vulnerability to abstraction – particularly
in the IGB
• affected more slowly than surface flows

• Sustaining groundwater under climate change will

require adaptive water management that
• accounts for spatial and vertical heterogeneities in
aquifers
• leveraging opportunities for natural and artificial
groundwater recharge (managed aquifer recharge)

Adapted from: CGWB 2015; McDonald et al, 2016, Asoka et al, 2017
The state-of-art of the science for climate smart water management
Climate change projections:
spatial resolutions and data
 CMIP 5 GCMs (spatial
resolutions of 60-300 km )
predict quite well annual
mean temperature and
precipitation and extremes
 Increasing confidence in
CORDEX/RCMs downscaled
predictions to 50/25 km
resolutions for regional
applications
 Downscaled information at
finer resolutions relevant to
hydrologic modelling
becoming feasible with big
data methods (NASA, Climate
Corp)
Issue: easy/free access to
authenticated high resolution
climate data for hydrologic
studies
Climate change hydrology
 High resolution hydrologic models for Indian river
basins including runoff generation, water balance
and streamflow routing increasingly available
 CWC & NRSC's WRIS provides geospatial
hydrologic products at 16.5 km resolution on surface
runoff, evapotranspiration, soil moisture and river
discharge with two-day time lag
 Groundwater hydrology and quality not so
extensively explored and researched in India
 GRACE, ESA-CIC and SWOT satellite data on
groundwater levels, soil moisture and surface water
available in public domain
 Daily 5m resolution satellite products available for
land use monitoring from microsatellites
(Planet.com)
Issue: data access on flows, groundwater levels,
hydrogeology, water quality; access to authenticated
high resolution digital data on topography, land use,
soils, river flows, groundwater levels, water quality
Guiding principles for framework for operationalizing climate smart
sustainable water security in India

• Water security in India is equally concerned with Digital watershed atlas of India
green water (soil water), and blue water (surface and is a source for such typology
groundwater) as over 60 mha will be rainfed and scaling of model outputs
• Groundwater recharge management is key to future
water security
• A one size fits all approach does not work as climate,
natural resources, water use vary spatially
• But one-water concept is central
• Climate smart water security management framework
must :
• be based on scalable typologies representative of
spatial heterogeneities
• be informed by high resolution data and scalable,
integrable climate-soil water-surface water-
groundwater hydrologic models
• identify and leverage opportunities for natural and
artificial groundwater recharge, and augmentation
from other sources to mitigate risks
Framework for water security

CWC provides national scale, 9

min (16 km) grid-wise surface
runoff, evapotranspiration, soil
moisture data estimated with
two-day time lag since 01 Jan
2014
 To conclude :
Globally, the state-of-art of climate, water and other sciences can :
• provide evidence to identify and assess water-related risks for a water security
• make the case for investment in risk reduction
But the effectiveness of the science to deliver water security depends on:
• Scientific and institutional capacities to absorb and apply the science:
• create the data networks for data generation and access
• develop new interdisciplinary and innovation competencies
• (bridging the data and technology valley of death)

• Policies that:
• encourage rapid adoption of technologies for efficient water use
• ensure timely action and adaptation towards risk reduction
• enable free access to data and models to enhance the capacity of science to provide
improved solutions
• allow leveraging digital India capacities for data generation and access, and
technology transfer
Thank You