The Impacts of Climate Variability and Future Climate Change in the Nile Basin on Water Resources in Egypt

This paper describes the application of hydrologic models of the Blue Nile and Lake Victoria sub-basins to assess the magnitude of potential impacts of climate change on Main Nile discharge. The models are calibrated to simulate historical observed runoff and then driven with the temperature and precipitation changes from three general circulation model (GCM) climate scenarios. The differences in the resulting magnitude and direction of changes in runoff highlight the inter-model differences in future climate change scenarios. A 'wet' case, 'dry' case and composite case produced +15 (+12), -9 (-9) and + 1(+7) per cent changes in mean annual Blue Nile (Lake Victoria) runoff for 2025, respectively. These figures are used to estimate changes in the availability of Nile water in Egypt by making assumptions about the runoff response in the other Nile sub-basins and the continued use of the Nile Waters Agreement. Comparison of these availability scenarios with demand projections for Egypt show a slight surplus ...

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