This study focussed on the hydrological impact modelling of water resources development and climate change scenarios on discharge conditions in the Zambezi basin. A river basin model was calibrated with historic data, before being applied for a number of scenarios. A specific objective of this study was
a thorough evaluation of the model simulations, as there has been a lack thereof in previous impact assessment studies. Our simulations of historic conditions are consistent with available observations. This applies for simulation of river discharge as well as reservoir water levels. The model performance statistics do not drop significantly when moving from the calibration period to an
independent evaluation period. Overall, the performance statistics are superior to previous studies. The accurate discharge simulations thereby increase Daporinad the confidence in the impact assessment. The simulation of historic conditions enables the following conclusions: • There are large inter-annual variations in discharge. Discharge in wet years is more than twice as large as discharge in dry years, which is related to small variations in precipitation. This high sensitivity of discharge to precipitation was not fully appraised in previous impact modelling studies. Several scenarios were defined Trametinib manufacturer considering future developments for irrigation withdrawals and dams as well as climate change scenarios, with the following main findings: • The biggest changes in the Zambezi basin have already occurred in the past. The construction of large reservoirs caused a decrease in discharge by evaporation and significantly altered the discharge conditions by reservoir operation. Low flows have been increased and high flows decreased. These scenarios show that the impact on future Zambezi River discharge can be quite large. At the same time, the human-induced changes in the past may have been larger
than the changes in the future. This also means that human management – if adapted well to the changing conditions – can contribute substantially to mitigating negative effects of a changing climate. Here, the largest uncertainty relates to future precipitation. Anacetrapib Current, on-going research efforts with regional climate models applied to Africa should enable more detailed assessments within an ensemble modelling framework. This project was carried out in collaboration with HYDROC, Germany for the National Institute of Disaster Management (INGC), Mozambique. Funding was provided from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Many thanks go to the various institutions supporting this project, but most notably to the Physics Department at Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) and the Centro Naçional Operativo de Emergência (CENOE), both located in Maputo, Mozambique.