Surface Water Hydrology

Professor Rajib Maity

Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
Lecture 5
Hydrology and Climate Change

In this lecture, we will discuss one important issue which is related to hydrology in general, and
particularly for surface water resources. It is related to the effect of climate change. So, we will
just try to understand what is the link between these two? And what are the causes of concern,
that are being faced by this surface water resource?

(Refer Slide Time: 00:40)

So, we will try to know what is the concept of this climate change, and we will try to understand
the impact of climate change on hydrology.
(Refer Slide Time: 00:49)

In this outline, first of all, we try to note the basic concept of weather and climate, what is the
difference between these two. Then impact of climate change on hydrology, and then we should
know a new term, that is called hydro climatology.

(Refer Slide Time: 01:06)

Weather and Climate

• Weather: It is the atmospheric condition at a particular place over a short period of time
(e.g. hour or day or week).

• Climate: It is the average weather pattern over a climatological period (30-35 years).
Climate Variability vs Climate Change

• Climate Variability: It refers to the variations of climate that typically last longer than
individual weather events (e.g., one or a few years).

• Climate Change: It refers to the variations in climate that persist for a much longer period
of time (e.g., decades or more).

(Refer Slide Time: 03:04)

Different manifestations of climate change are as follows:

1. Global Warming

2. Ocean Heating

3. Glacier Melting

4. Sea-level rise

5. Intensification of Hydrological cycle

6. Increase in Hydroclimatic extremes

Different manifestations of climate change on Hydrology

Intensification of water cycle means that all of its components are enhancing, i.e. more
evaporation, more precipitation and more run-off etc. Many strong evidences for such
intensification have been reported.

The warmer climate increases the moisture holding capacity of atmosphere. Moreover, with
increase in average surface temperature, evaporation and evapotranspiration from land-mass and
ocean are likely to increase. More evaporation leads to more rainfall which is expected to fall
predominantly over land. Thus enhancing each components of Hydrological cycle.

Many times, in recent years, we have seen that our cities or our different locality in India and in
general in all over the world, are receiving some unprecedented rainfall. So, it is causing some
temporary waterlogging and there are so many devastating things that we see. So, this is thought
to be one of the major impacts of climate change and that hydrology, in general, should be
concerned with. And of course, surface water management is one of the major issues in this
aspect.
(Refer Slide Time: 06:02)

As an overall consequence of global warming and intensification of global water, hydroclimatic

extreme events are increasing in different parts of the globe. Numerous studies have proved that,
not only the magnitudes, the frequencies of extreme events are increasing too.

Incidents like intense rainfall, heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones are more frequent and
severe in the recent past.

Such extreme events have some fatal immediate and far-reaching consequences like loss of lives,
property, food grains, infrastructure, which affect the socio-economic growth of a country.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:46)

Introduction of Hydroclimatology

Hydrology is the science that involves studies related to occurrence and movement of water in
the combined system of surface, subsurface and atmosphere.

Climatology is the field of study related to exchange of mass, momentum and energy between
land/ocean surface and atmosphere. Vertical and horizontal uses of these quantities drive the
interaction between earth surface (both land and ocean) and atmosphere

These are kind of interrelated. ‘Interrelated’ means if the climatological processes, happen
between the land surface and the atmosphere, influenced the hydrological processes very much.
This we have learned from the hydrologic cycle, in general. Now, these two fields lead to an
interdisciplinary field, which is known as hydroclimatology.

Thus, Hydroclimatology is an interdisciplinary area of study that deals with the interaction
between hydrology and climatology to identify the influence of the climatic system on different
hydrologic processes, which are the parts of hydrologic cycle.

(Refer Slide Time: 10:16)

Role of Hydroclimatology in Surface Water Hydrology

Atmospheric component of hydrologic cycle is coupled with climatic phenomena and thus, any
change or variability may affect each other through different feedback systems.
 • For example, hydrologic variables, such as rainfall, soil moisture, streamflow etc. are
significantly influenced by various global or local scale atmospheric circulations.

• In the context of climate change, role of hydroclimatic studies have become crucial in
many applications.

(Refer Slide Time: 12:17)

Climate change is considered as one of the most important burning issues in this 21st century’s
world. It has already been proved that world’s climate has changed significantly in the past and it
will continue in the future too. This changing scenario of climate has many immediate and far-
reaching impacts at global, as well as at regional level. Such impacts can be identified in water
resources sector, agricultural sector and socio-economic sector of a country. Due to its strong
association with the economic prosperity of a nation, climate change has got widespread
attention. Heavy rainfall, floods, droughts are some of the global concerns and thus emerges as a
multi-dimensional research domain.
(Refer Slide Time: 13:51)

Why is it important in Surface Water Hydrology?

The arithmetic mean of any variable (e.g. precipitation, streamflow) over a climatological
period is considered as climatologically ‘normal’. Climatologists most often compare present
climatological situation to that of the past or what is considered ‘normal’.

Such studies have shown that the ‘normal’ behaviour of different variables throughout the
world is changing all across the world due to the effect of ‘Climate Change’. The image in
Fig. 1 shows a snapshot of heavy rainfall in Assam in July 2019.

Fig. 1: Heavy Precipitation in Assam (https://weather.com/ July 2019)

(Refer Slide Time: 15:41)

Summary

In summary, we learnt following points from this lecture:

• Climate change is likely to have various immediate and far-reaching impacts on water
resources.

• Overall different components of hydrological cycles is accelerated casing intensification

of hydrological cycle.

• This has imposed new set of challenges in the conventional approaches in surface water
hydrology.

• Hydroclimatology is an interdisciplinary area of study that deals with the interaction

between hydrology and climatology to identify the influence of the climatic system on
different hydrologic processes, which are the parts of hydrologic cycle.