The impacts of climate change on the winter water cycle of the western Himalaya

Some 180 million people depend on the Indus River as a key water resource, fed largely by precipitation falling over the western Himalaya. However, the projected response of western Himalayan precipitation to climate change is currently not well constrained: CMIP5 GCMs project a reduced frequency and vorticity of synoptic-scale systems impacting the area, but such systems would exist in a considerably moister atmosphere. In this study, a convection-permitting (4 km horizontal resolution) setup of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used to examine 40 cases of these synoptic-scale systems, known as western disturbances (WDs), as they interact with the western Himalaya. In addition to a present-day control run, three experiments are performed by perturbing the boundary and initial conditions to reflect pre-industrial, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 background climates respectively. It is found that in spite of the weakening intensity of WDs, net precipitation associated with them in future climate scenarios increases significantly; conversely there is no net change in precipitation between the pre-industrial and control experiments despite a significant conversion of snowfall in the pre-industrial experiment to rainfall in the control experiment, consistent with the changes seen in historical observations. This shift from snowfall to rainfall has profound consequences on water resource management in the Indus Valley, where irrigation is dependent on spring meltwater. Flux decomposition shows that the increase in future precipitation follows directly from the projected moistening of the tropical atmosphere (which increases the moisture flux incident on the western Himalaya by 28%) overpowering the weakened dynamics (which decreases it by 20%). Changes to extreme rainfall events are also examined: it is found that such events may increase significantly in frequency in both future scenarios examined. Two-hour maxima rainfall events that currently occur in 1-in-8 WDs are projected to increase tenfold in frequency in the RCP8.5 scenario; more prolonged (one-week maxima) events are projected to increase fiftyfold

Monsoon-extratropical circulation interactions in Himalayan extreme rainfall

Extreme precipitation and flood episodes in the Himalayas are oftentimes traced to synoptic situations involving connections between equatorward advancing upper level extratropical circulations and moisture-laden tropical monsoon circulation. While previous studies have documented precipitation characteristics in the Himalayan region during severe storm cases, a comprehensive understanding of circulation dynamics of extreme precipitation mechanisms is still warranted. In this study, a detailed analysis is performed using rainfall observations and reanalysis circulation products to understand the evolution of monsoon-extratropical circulation features and their interactions based on 34 extreme precipitation events which occurred in the Western Himalayas (WEH) during the period 1979–2013. Our results provide evidence for a common large-scale circulation pattern connecting the extratropics and the South Asian monsoon region, which is favorable for extreme precipitation occurrences in the WEH region. This background upper level large-scale circulation pattern consists of a deep southward penetrating midlatitude westerly trough, a blocking high over western Eurasia and an intensifying Tibetan anticyclone. It is further seen from our analysis that the key elements of monsoon-midlatitude interactions, responsible for extreme precipitation events over the WEH region, are: (1) midlatitude Rossby wave breaking, (2) west-northwest propagation of monsoon low-pressure system from the Bay of Bengal across the Indian subcontinent, (3) eddy shedding of the Tibetan anticyclone, (4) ageostrophic motions and transverse circulation across the Himalayas, and (5) strong moist convection over the Himalayan foothills. Furthermore, high-resolution numerical simulations indicate that diabatic heating and mesoscale ageostrophic effects can additionally amplify the convective motions and precipitation in the WEH region

Hydrological processes in glacierized high-altitude basins of the western Himalayas

Western Himalaya is a strategically important region, where the water resources are shared by China, India and Pakistan. The economy of the region is largely dependent on the water resources delivered by snow and glacier melt. The presented study used stable isotopes of water to further understand the basin-scale hydro-meteorological, hydrological and recharge processes in three high-altitude mountainous basins of the western Himalayas. The study provided new insights in understanding the dominant factors affecting the isotopic composition of the precipitation, snowpack, glacier melt, streams and springs. It was observed that elevation-dependent post-depositional processes and snowpack evolution resulted in the higher isotopic altitude gradient in snowpacks. The similar temporal trends of isotopic signals in rivers and karst springs reflect the rapid flow transfer due to karstification of the carbonate aquifers. The attenuation of the extreme isotopic input signal in karst springs appears to be due to the mixing of source waters with the underground karst reservoirs. Basin-wise, the input–output response demonstrates the vital role of winter precipitation in maintaining the perennial flow in streams and karst springs in the region. Isotopic data were also used to estimate the mean recharge altitude of the springs