Assessing the impact of climate change on surface water resources of Wular Lake

Research and investigation was carried out on Assessing the impacts of climate change on Surface Water Resources of Wular Lake. The discharge of river Jhelum at Asham Inlet was obtained of the previous 21 years, and formatted to a pre-requisite form. Also the climatic data viz. temperature, precipitation, etc. were obtained from the metrological station. The three main variables of study were used as discharge, temperature and precipitation; discharge being the response variable with respect to the remaining two. Trend lines were established for each of the variables with the help of the moving averages of 5 years; which revealed the increasing trend in the temperature and the decreasing trend in the discharge and the precipitation. The trend of the three parameters was in accordance with the global climatic and hydrological findings. Further, to analyse the findings, Mann-Kendall's tests was used to ascertain the results. As per this test, temperature indicates a significant trend at 10% significance level with a p-value of 0.0494 while the precipitation could not reveal any significant trend over the limited time frame of study even at 10% significance level, which could be a result of the seasonal dimension to it. The discharge displayed a no trend over the given period of study at 5% significance levels. Further Kendall correlation test was done on the three variables of study; a significant correlation between mean annual temperature and annual rainfall was found, the magnitude of correlation coefficient being 0.46. A significant correlation was found between the annual rainfall and the mean annual discharge and correlation coefficient value of 0.65 was observed. Also a weak correlation was found between mean annual discharge and mean annual temperature; the coefficient value was found to be – 0.6190. The results are in accordance with the global findings which depict rising global temperatures and decreasing precipitation. The given study concluded that there was an adverse effect of the climate change on the catchment of the Wular Lake as visible by the various tests.