Water Resources of the Ganga basin under a Changing Climate: interaction between Glaciers and Monsoon in the Himalaya

Climate change is expected to have a profound impact on the availability of water in the Ganga basin. Combined changes in glacier melt and monsoon precipitation will affect the total amount of water available. Increasing greenhouse gases are likely to lead to intensification of the water cycle, causing an increase in extreme events, especially droughts. However, magnitudes of these changes are highly uncertain. Being largely an agrarian society, India is vulnerable to adverse impacts of current and long-term changes in climate. In order to improve adaptive capacity in the Ganga River basin it is necessary (a) to improve representation of feedback mechanisms of glacier melting within regional and global climate model predictions of future water resouce availability, (b) to understand the impacts and associated vulnerability at the local level and related to district, state and national levels, and (c) to develop new methods enabling prioritization of adaptation measures.