Climate change projections over Indus basin using CMIP6 model simulations

Indus basin is one of the most vulnerable regions due to climate change. This article presents the projected changes in precipitation and temperature over the Indus Basin using statistically downscaled, bias-corrected Coupled Model Intercomparison Project-6 (CMIP6) data sets for different shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5) in response to global warming. The future changes in precipitation and temperature extremes for different epochal periods of the 21st century are outlined. The spatial variations of precipitation, maximum and minimum temperature obtained from the Multi-Model Mean (MMM) of CMIP6 models showed a good agreement with observations such as APHRODITE (precipitation), CPC (temperature) for the base period 1995 to 2014 over the Indus Basin. Our results suggest that there is a general increase in precipitation/ maximum and minimum temperature over the Upper Indus Basin/Lower Indus Basin by the end of the 21st century. It is also noted that the spatial variability of extreme climate indices is high during June to September (JJAS) than December to January (DJF). By the end of the century projections show that the precipitation changes are about 85% in JJAS and 40% in DJF with reference to the baseline (1995–2014) period over Indus Basin region. The temperature extreme indices are also increasing in future compare to the baseline period.