M. Sreelata in SciDev.net: Climate change could lead to huge water shortages in southern India’s fertile Godavari river basin, a new study based on computer simulations shows. The study by scientists from India and Norway, started in February 2009, is part of several compiled into a book, 'Water and Climate Change: an integrated approach to adaptation challenges', released last month (1 February).The study — funded by Bioforsk, the Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research — was implemented by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, and the International Water Management Institute, Colombo.
The team used water flows and soil data in the Godavarai basin from 1961 to 1990 as the baseline; and simulated avilability from 2021 to 2050 in the near-term and from 2071 to 2098 in the long-term. They predicted a mix of excess rainfall and drought-like conditions in vast stretches of the eastern part of the basin.
"Though the basin may get excess rains, everything seems to be getting lost to the atmosphere due to heat and evapo-transpiration (loss of water due to evaporation from the surface) caused by an increase in climate temperature," Ashvin Kumar Gosain, professor at the civil engineering department of the IIT- Delhi, told SciDev.Net....
The old and new bridges over the Godavari River, shot by Mydhili Bayyapunedi, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license
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