Evaluation of climate change impact on Arachthos river discharge using the SWAT model

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2014), events such as droughts and floods will become more frequent and widespread in the future due to climate change. These events will have an impact on streamflow, ecosystems health, groundwater availability, reservoir storage, crop yield etc. Generally, climate change will influence the global hydrological cycle by increasing water holding capacity of the atmosphere due to increasing global temperature (Dahal et al. 2016). Some of climate change impacts could be reduced with foreknowledge of magnitude of future events. Hydrological models, for example, can estimate with adequate precision the differentiation in climate and hydrological attributes in a river basin and make some accurate predictions for the future situation. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the impact of climate change on Arachthos river watershed located in western Greece. For this purpose, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model (Arnold et al. 1998; Neitsch et al. 2005) was used. The focus was on river discharge under climate change scenario for years 2050-2051 and 2090-2091.