Climate Change and Water Resources Variability in the Tarim River Basin

Water resources availability for meeting reservoir storage, water supply diversion, and environmental instream flow requirements must be assessed based on various premises regarding future water uses as well as climatic and hydrological conditions. This study, therefore, investigates the possible association between climate change and water resources variability, and detects the plausible long-term trends of the temperature, precipitation, and streamflow time series. The long-term trends of the hydrological time series including temperature, precipitation, and streamflow are detected by using nonparametric test. The conclusion obtained in this study shows that the temperature experienced a significant monotonic increase at the 5% level of significance during the past fifty years, and precipitation also exhibited an upward tendency during the past several decades. This may result from the possible impact of climate change, although the interior climate mechanism needs further investigation. Although precipitation and the streamflow from the headwater of the Tarim River exhibited significant increase, decreasing trend has been detected in the streamflow along the mainstream of the river. It implies that anthropogenic activities instead of the climate change dominated the streamflow cessation and the drying-up of the river. This conclusion shows that the water curtailment, river desiccation, and ecosystem deterioration in the study area may be mainly resulted from the human activities. This investigation enhances the knowledge of the climate change impact on water resources in the Tarim River basin.